Good Site Design

There is no formula for designing the perfect site. Web sites have different purposes and therefore have to be designed to meet those specific needs.

Personal sites, entertainment sites, small business and corporate e-commerce sites all have different priorities. These sites all have to be designed based on different guidelines in terms of content and how that content is presented.

This is largely dependant on who the audience is, the likely hardware and software they'll be using and what they aim to get from the site.

"Good" and "Bad" design decisions are relative. What works on one site might not work on another. There are however general guidelines that when followed will ensure better site design in terms of usability, accuracy, functionality of various platforms and accessibility to people with certain limitations.

Consider the following guidelines when designing your site.

General Page Design:

File Size: Keeping the file size as small as possible ensures quick downloads. If your pages take too long to download, your audience get impatient and goes elsewhere.

Screen Size: Although monitors are getting larger many people still use older machines. Web sites should be designed for a screen size of no bigger than 800 x 600 pixels. Unless you are sure your audience has the most up to date hardware designing for bigger screen sizes runs the risk of parts of your web page not being visible.

Design above the fold: As common in newspapers with the most important information being on the first page above the fold, your most important information should be on the first screen. Your site is judged by the first impression it creates. Viewers seldom take the time to scroll down to find important information.

Limit page length: People don't like scrolling. It's also difficult to read long passages of text on the screen. Try keep your page length to less than 3-4 screen fulls. If more information is needed, rather link to another page.

Browser functionality: Design your site to be functional on the most popular browsers. At the minimum it should work with Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. You'll alienate your audience if your site does not function correctly in their browser.

Animations: Limit the use of animations. While animations serve to attract attention to something, They are also annoying and distracting when you're trying to read the text on the page.

Under Construction: Don't use under construction pages. Nothing is more annoying than clicking on a link only to end up on an under construction page. It sends the message that you don't have your act together.

Text Formatting:

Proofread: Make sure you proofread your site before posting it. Bad spelling, and grammatical errors reflect poorly on you and your business.

Structure: Structure your site to present information in a clear and logical form. This helps your reader understand the content better and speeds up the process of finding what they need.

White Space: Make use of white space by breaking up content into small paragraphs. This makes it easier to read text online.

Capitals: Don't set all your text in capitals. It's harder to read and just looks wrong.

Formatting: Limit the use of formatting like bold, italics, underlined etc to highlight important points. Overuse of these features leads to overkill and defeats the object.

Headings: Limit heading sizes to H1 through H4. H5 & H6 headings are often presented smaller than regular text.

Line Breaks: Text wraps differently for each user depending on their browser settings. Using line breaks to format lines of text often leads to text wrapping in awkward unpredictable ways. Avoid if possible.

Graphics:

File Size: Keep graphics files as small as possible. Large graphics files can seriously affect the download speed of pages.

Accessibility issues: Always provide alternate text for every graphic. Alternate text displays in the event that the graphic doesn't. Providing alternate text is the easiest way to make your content accessible to a wider audience, including people with text only browsers, or users who have graphics turned off for faster page downloading.

Design: Don't make graphics look like buttons but then don't link to anything. This just confuses your audience and leads to frustration.

Aesthetics:

Layout: Don't center everything on the page. This makes it difficult to read.

Colors: Colors are useful to draw attention to something. Using too many colors looks unprofessional and also makes it difficult to prioritize information. It's best to choose one or two dominant colors for the page. A third color can be used to highlight important text.

Backgrounds: Be careful of using loud tiled backgrounds. More often than not it makes it very difficult to read the text on the page.