Web Design Guide
There is a need for creativity in web design, however goal of most of our projects is to inform users and to generate business leads. Anything which impedes this is bad design, no matter how creative.
We'll let those with million pound budgets push back the frontiers of web design. We prefer to produce websites conforming to established best practices to deliver outstanding value and return of investment for our clients.
The following list is not meant to be all all encompassing, but hopefully demonstrates key elements of our approach to producing good value web sites that fulfil their purpose.
1. Download Time
Still in 2008, No.1 in usability tests as the most important design element from the users point of view. This is something most web designers do not like to hear. Maybe not as important as it once was as broadband becomes ubiquitous, but many people will be viewing your site using slow connections, for example weak signal or busy wi-fi connections.
2. Ease of Navigation.
The second most common web site compliant - users cannot find the information they are looking for. Navigation should be clear and intuitive, and allow the user the tell where on the site they are.
3. Make the Site's Purpose Clear
Explain who you are and what you do. Summarises what the site or company does prominently on the homepage. This should tell users what they’ll gain from visiting the site and how the business differentiates itself from its rivals.
4. Portability
The site must work on any type of browser on any type of computer. The emergence of handheld technologies means web sites now more than ever must be viewable on the widest number of devices.
5. Design for the target audience, not yourself
Most web designers are young, with perfect eye sight, huge computer screens. Many are more concerned about scoring point over there other web designer mates, rather than producing something that best serves its purpose.
6. Scanability
Users tend to scan a page to see if it's worth investing
time to read it. Structure pages to facilitate scanning,
helping users ignore large chunks of the page in a single glance.
Use
meaningful words on hyperlinks to
improve scanability, as apposed to the words click
here appearing all over the page.
7. Design for search engines
The web may be visual, but search engines are purely textual. Populate pages titles, section heading etc, with words people interested your site and services are likely to use. Some call this search engine optimisation, we call it proper content design.
8. Don't be Cute
Unlike the above. Write straightforward and simple headlines and page titles that clearly explain what the page is about. Ensure they make sense when read out-of-context in a search engine results listing.
9. Kept current content updated
Outdated information either tells users the site is not being properly maintained, or misinforms them.
10. Design for 3 years ago
Most users do not, and will never, use leading edge technologies.
Meaning, by the time they use them, something else will
be leading edge.
A web site taking advantage of the
latest plugin technologies may be technically impresive. However, more people
would be able
to access/view
it if
the designer was less
ambitious and didn't require users to download addition software to view it.
