TCH-Sales Posted June 3, 2003 Posted June 3, 2003 Top Three Elements of Page Design by Mitch Keeler - Customer Support Director So you want to design your own website to put on the world wide web? Well as easy as it may seem; such as with anything, there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to go about it. Ease of Use The most important element of web page design is making things simple for the end user. Take, for an example, a dictionary. If the words weren't in alphabetical order, then it would be near impossible to find anything. The same thing applies in web design. You need to give your users a clear cut navigation system to work from. If a user has to search for more than a few seconds on how to go to the next page of your site, they probably won't go to the next page of your site. It doesn't mater where you put it on a layout either. It could be at the top, bottom, left, or right. Also, it's worth making a note of, if your site uses frames make sure you list some links back to the index or put a small menu at the bottom of each page; because if the inside frame is caught a users eye via a search engine, then they'd be trapped in that one page and unable to navigate anywhere else in your site. For larger websites, it wouldn't hurt to also have a site map page. This lays your entire site out in one page usually giving a hierarchy of links and sometimes a brief description of the content on that page. Accessibility Most webmasters look over this for the sake of being on the leading edge of technology. This however is not always the best way to operate. You have to take in consideration that your readers could be using a plethora of different operating systems or one of the many internet browsers out there available today. Also don't forget that many people are using a larger resolutions as well. It's important to get at least the most popular browsers in your hands (IE: Internet Explorer and Mozilla) then test to make sure your end page is looking the way you want it to in any browser. You must also look at the page via many different screen resolutions to see how limited you might be leaving other people out there. A tip I always use is to try working your page in percentages first. Instead of that table being 543 pixels, make it 80 percent. That way no matter what the screen resolution, it will always cover 80 percent of the screen. Anybody can built a layout, but only few can make that same layout accessible to anybody and everybody. Font sizes are important as well. The smaller they are, the harder it's going to be to read them at a higher resolution. If you insist on using small fonts though, at least make sure your font color and your background contrast enough to where the text shows up as clear as it can. (IE: black text on a white background) A rule of accessibility that some forget is to label your images. Make sure you give it some kind of tag, such as "a picture from my summer vacation". This will not only help handicapped viewers of your site, but if the user has images turned off or if he's just waiting for it to load he'll know what that picture is about. Along with making sure you give an alt tag with your pictures and images, make sure you label their height and width as well. That way if a layout is taking some time to load, we can be sure that the picture of grandma is only one-hundred pixels high and one-hundred pixels in width. Target Your Audience The last element of design I have to share with you is targeting your audience. As another example, take a website for a retirement home. You wouldn't want to put bright neon colors, really tiny text and nuclear explosion images all over the page. You would want to use cool and calm colors, large text, and maybe a few pictures around the grounds of the retirement home. If you're creating a web page, then we assume that you know who you're creating it for. Try to give your users a layout they can enjoy, and aim towards their needs and wants. In Conclusion... I'm sure there are more tips and tricks to web design that I didn't even begin to go into here, but these are definitely the most important. Without ease of use, visitors won't stay at your site for long out of frustration. Without accessibility, you're cutting the prospects of potential customers in half if not more. Then without targeting your audience, you have a bunch of senior citizens running scared with your nuclear explosion images and tiny text. Quote
SEO Posted June 11, 2003 Posted June 11, 2003 Mitch: Nice article indeed! However... as my title might suggest I have to make comment. Critical and most often neglected (as in the case of this article) is search engine optimization considerations. I mean think about it. You could have a beautiful, easy navigational, content filled site but if no one can find it... what good is it? Maybe we need four elements? Quote
TCH-Sales Posted June 11, 2003 Author Posted June 11, 2003 Is this a shameless plug?!? Definately there are more elements of design and these aren't in any order through. These three are the three most important though, in my humble "customer directing" opinion. This sparks another idea, maybe I'll create a special forum for feedback on my columns? Hmmm.... Naughty Quote
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