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.
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