The effective design is this one, which is maximum simplified,
conformable to your users because they are your main purpose.
This one, simply and clearly announcing what is your website
about. This one, quickly offering the users exactly what they
are expecting to see on your pages without being troubled with
insignificant information. The big mistake made by lots of web
designers is to project their activities from their own point of
view, without thinking about user.
Factors, damaging the website design effectiveness
• Additional time needed for website downloading
• Badly written content
• Complex design, abundant in elements
• Difficult navigation, incomprehensible for user
• No validated program language
Additional time needed for website downloading
Your pages downloading time is extremely important. Your users
will shut your website down very quickly if you make them wait
more because of your slowly downloading pages. The other sites
are on a mouse click away from them.
• Not important if you are talking about graphics, multimedia,
scripts, applets - be cautious about their location on your
site. Don't put them without judging their position, just
because you or your designer had an idea about it. Design them
small-sized, too.
Badly written content
The text that is ready for print has nothing to do with the text
for the Web. According to Jacob Nielsen, Web usability guru,
users have more difficulties in reading the information on
computers rather than on printed editions. They rather scan it
than read it profoundly. Huge text blocks are unreadable and
couldn't allow them to do it. Means to make text more readable
and effective could be effectuated by using:
• separate paragraphs • titles • subtitles • indentations •
bullets • bolds • hyperlinks • different fonts and sizes
Complex design, abundant in elements
• Don't complicate users work by complex and abundant design
making the website not to be clear in terms of its downloading
and its appearance on their screens.
• Avoid frames. They could seriously damage your website
usability.
• Having a site, made on FLASH you can't explain fast and clear
to users what his content is about, what it would be useful
with, what they could win, using your services, because only its
downloading will take several minutes. If you insist however on
including FLASH elements, much better variant is to insert them
in a detached small file, with definite size, but inserting it,
you have to possess some clear purpose. It refers much more to
your home page, which is your website main portal.
• Don't leave your pages without comprehensible title tags,
clearly explaining what is your page about (title tag is the
page title you see on the top of the browser).
• Don't leave your site home page without text, explaining to
your users who you are and what you are talking about on your
site.
Difficult navigation, incomprehensible for user
• Don't upset user by bad navigation, making him feel lost. He
could enter your site by each of its pages, not only by the home
page. If he/she enters by another one, he/she must understand
what is his/her position on your site, where he/she could go by
clicking the corresponding link.
• Don't leave your site without a site map. The site map gives
user the possibility to orientate fast and easy on it.
• Always put on each of your pages a link to the home page plus
the firm's name and logo, making them also a link to the home
page.
• Don't allow the existing of a orphaned page, where a user
could find lost.
• Don't change the default color of the hyperlinks, because
users are expecting to see them exactly that way. When a text is
blue, the user is used to thing it is a link, and if it is
purple, that it is a visited link. The different colors from the
default ones will throw them into confusion.
• Don't make blue a text that is not a hyperlink. That will also
confuse them.
• Don't put a link that leads to the same page, except these
that go to other page sections.
No validated program language
The code your site is written in is validated depending on
browsers from different types and versions.
• Incorrectly written program code will make your site users
close it immediately due to its bad appearing in their browsers.
• The correctly written code is the best way to ensure on your
pages the properly appearing of as more as possible browsers. It
includes old versions and versions that will be published.
About the author:
Veselin Andreev is one of the Svilaves founders - website design
and promotion services, the quality and effect of which are
aiming at the successful development of their clients business.
Read the exact details of their services on the address:
http://www.svilaves.com
