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Make the Site's
Purpose Clear: Explain Who You Are and What You Do
Designing for the
User
The homepage is the most
important page on most websites, and gets more page views than any other page.
Of course, users don't always enter a website from the homepage. A website is
like a house in which every window is also a door: People can follow links from
search engines and other websites that reach deep inside your site. However,
one of the first things these users do after arriving at a new site is go to
the homepage. Deep linking is very useful, but it doesn't give users the site
overview a homepage offers -- if the homepage design follows strong usability
guidelines, that is.
Help Users Find What They Need . Emphasize the
Site's Top High-Priority Tasks Your homepage should offer users a clear
starting point for the main one to four tasks they'll undertake when visiting
your site.
Use Visual Design to Enhance, not Define, Interaction
Design
Structure the page to facilitate scanning and help users ignore
large chunks of the page in a single glance: for example, use grouping and
subheadings to break a long list into several smaller units.
You might
think that important homepage items require elaborate illustrations, boxes, and
colors. However, users often dismiss graphics as ads, and focus on the parts of
the homepage that look more likely to be useful.
Use Meaningful
Graphics Don't just decorate the page with stock art. Images are powerful
communicators when they show items of interest to users, but will backfire if
they seem frivolous or irrelevant. .
Instead of cramming everything
about a product or topic into a single, infinite page, use hypertext to
structure the content space into a starting page that provides an overview and
several secondary pages that each focus on a specific topic. The goal is to
allow users to avoid wasting time on those subtopics that don't concern them.
Writing straightforward and simple headlines and page titles that
clearly explain what the page is about and that will make sense when read
out-of-context in a search engine results listing.
We provide search if
the site has more than 100 pages
We place your name and logo on every
page and make the logo a link to the home page (except on the home page itself,
where the logo should not be a link: we never have a link that points right
back to the current page).
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Users blame themselves
when they can't use technology. This phenomenon is bad enough already; it's
made worse by the prevalence of scenes in which people walk up to random
computers and start using them immediately. We need people to start demanding
easier design and blaming the technology when it's too hard to use. Or make
them wait and wait for a unoptimized page to load
Use product photos,
but avoid cluttered and bloated product family pages with lots of photos.
Instead have a small photo on each of the individual product pages and link the
photo to one or more bigger ones that show as much detail as users need. This
varies depending on type of product. Some products may even need zoomable or
rotatable photos, but reserve all such advanced features for the secondary
pages. The primary product page must be fast and should be limited to a
thumbnail shot.
Use relevance-enhanced
image reduction when preparing small photos and images: instead of simply
resizing the original image to a tiny and unreadable thumbnail, zoom in on the
most relevant detail and use a combination of cropping and resizing. Use link
titles to provide users with a preview of where each link will take them,
before they have clicked on it.
if most big websites do something in a
certain way, then follow along since users will expect things to work the same
on your site.
Don't mix navigation instructions with your content. Don't
use 'Click Here' as a method to navigate your web site. Instead, take the time
to design a comprehensive navigation system that makes it easy for visitors to
find what they're looking for without getting lost or ending up on an orphan
page. Your navigation system should stand on its own. Hypertext links should
not replace a navigation system.
Keep it to the point. . .
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Elements that cause a visitor to
leave:
Color combinations of text and
background that make the text hard to read
Busy,
distracting backgrounds that make the text hard to read
Text that is too small to read Text crowding against the left
edge
Text that stretches all the way across the
page Centered type over flush left body copy
Paragraphs of type in all caps
Paragraphs of type in bold Paragraphs of type in italic
Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once
Underlined text that is not a
link
Links Default blue links
Blue link borders around graphics
Links that are not clear about where they will take
you
Links in body copy that distract readers and
lead them off to remote, useless pages
Text links
that are not underlined so you don't know they are links
Dead links (links that don't work anymore)
Graphics Large graphic files that take forever to load
Meaningless or useless graphics
Thumbnail images that are nearly as large as the full-sized images
they link to
Graphics with no alt
labels
Missing graphics, especially missing
graphics with no alt labels
Graphics that don't
fit on the screen
Tables Borders turned on in
tables
Tables used as design elements, especially
with extra large (dorky) borders
Blinking and
animations Anything that blinks, especially text
Multiple things that blink Rainbow rules (lines)
Rainbow rules that blink or animate "Under construction" signs,
especially of little men working Animated "under construction" signs
Animated pictures for e-mail
Animations that never stop
Multiple
animations that never stop
Junk Counters on
pages--who cares
Junky advertising Having to
scroll sideways (640 x 460 pixels)
Too many
little pictures of meaningless awards on the first page
Frame scroll bars in the middle of a page
Multiple frame scroll bars in the middle of a page Navigation
Unclear navigation; over complex navigation
Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in
frames Orphan pages (no links back to where they came from, no identification)
Useless page titles that don't explain what the
page is about
General Design Entry page or home
page that does not fit within standard browser window
Frames that make you scroll sideways
No focal point on the page
Too many
focal points on the page
Navigation buttons as
the only visual interest, especially when they're large (and
dorky)
Cluttered, not enough alignment of
elements
Lack of contrast (in color, text, to
create hierarchy of information, etc.)
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