Spring 98

by Denise Østed

• Some of the Don’ts
• some of the Dos

  There are a few different ways to approach the design and layout of your web site. You might be making a site for a business, and want to use all the latest technology. You might want a personal site where you can show off all the cool HTML and Java and cgi skills you have. Or you might want to set up a page to share information and network with other women. This article is about how to make the most effective information-sharing site possible.

  By “most effective,” I mean a site which will be accessible and legible for the greatest number of people. This is a site which is high on content and low on useless, distracting, time-consuming extras. For the most effective online communication, you need clarity, brevity, and simplicity.

  I do research on the net, both for myself and for others, and this article is the result of a couple of years of raves and rants about the various ways people design their sites.

  Here are some of the Don’ts:

  Don’t use frames. Frames make it difficult to bookmark a page for a return visit, and they make printing out a hard copy equally difficult. They also take more time to load, and often aren’t designed well enough to fit on a user’s screen without extra scrolling, clicking around, and general confusion. Frames take away the visitor’s sense of consistency; she can’t tell where the new information will pop up, and it ends up being a navigational nightmare.

  Don’t use “blink” unless it’s absolutely necessary. It gets really irritating to have a section of text constantly flashing on and off as you try to read the screen. A minimal and judicious use of blink is tolerable - barely. The same applies to animated graphics and scrolling text. People like to read text which stands still. If your visitors get bombarded by enough movement and chaos, we’re going to go away. By the same token, avoid using sentences or phrases which are all in upper case. This is “shouting” and it is hard to read.

  Don’t have audio or video which pops up automatically. Remember that many people still have computers and browsers which can’t handle these things, and ask yourself if the audio or video you are including is truly necessary to get your message across. Also, people often have to download extra software to be able to access your video or audio, and most of us information seekers frankly just don’t have the time to mess around with that. If you absolutely must use audio or video, include a link to a site where your visitor can download the required software, and be sure to include a summary/description of the audio or video clip so we can make our own decision about whether it’s worth the extra time and effort.

  Be very careful about using Java or cgi unless you are absolutely confident that they will run properly. And if you are certain they’ll work well, think yet again. Java crashes some browsers, and applets sometimes make it impossible to use the “back” function to return to the previous page. Having a web site crash or become otherwise inaccessible because of some kind of programming error is irritating beyond words!

  Image maps are also problematic. If the image is large, it will take an extremely long time to download. And if your visitors are surfing with their images turned off, they won’t be able to navigate using the map. Surfing with images turned off is very common for people who are seeking information, as opposed to merely surfing for cool sites. So if you must use an image map, make sure you also include a conventional text link menu.

  Don’t use excessively large graphics or overly long pages. (Try to keep your pages under 30K). Not many people will scroll down past the visible part of the page unless we’re pretty sure we’ll find what we want further down the page. And nobody likes sitting around waiting for immense graphics to load. It’s better to use a few small graphics on several short pages, than to have a ten-screen page with a huge image right at the top. And remember not to make your graphics essential to the page’s information, because people with images turned off will lose that information.

  Here are some of the Dos:

  Remember that your content is the reason people come to your page in the first place. Cut to the chase; let people know right away who you are (or what the organization is) and what information you have on your site. Your main page should have some kind of listing of the contents of the site, with links to those pages. Don’t make your visitors hunt for information; give it to us. And don’t make an “introduction page” consisting of a single flashy graphic and a link to “enter” in to the site. We are visiting your site because we already know there’s something there which interests us. Don’t waste our time and make us go looking for it.

  Do include “alt text” with your images, especially if the image has any relevance at all to the content of the site. I have some little decorative balls at each list item on my site, and I use a single space for an alt text, because people who can’t see the images aren’t going to be delighted with (or learn anything useful from) an alt text saying “Decorative Ball” by each list item. Use your common sense. For your organization’s logo, your alt text might simply be the name of your organization. Alt text is also useful for people who are visually-impaired, and who depend on speech software to read the page to them.

  Do ensure that your background colour or graphic is compatible with the text colour. It’s harder to read pale text on a dark background than it is to read simple black text on a white background. Remember that colours turn out differently in different browsers and on different monitors. The shades which are “perfect” on your computer might be an illegible mess somewhere else. In addition, a lot of people find it difficult to read screens even with the clearest colours, so please make it as easy as possible for us. It’s also a good idea not to mess with the standard blue link colour, since web surfers have been trained to see a blue, underlined section of text as a link. For the same reason, it’s best not to underline other sections of text unless that is necessary (book titles are a good example of necessary underlining).

  If you use a background graphic, be sure to specify a background colour for people who have their images turned off. Otherwise, your text might not be visible to visitors.

  Do include contact information on every page. This means your name, the organization’s name, the e-mail address to which inquiries can be sent, the snail mail address, telephone and fax number, etc. You can also set up one page at your site with this information, and just include a link to that on every page in your site.

  Do ensure that visitors to your site can easily navigate around. That means including links on every single page - back to the home page, back to the top of the current page, back to the beginning of the current section, and to other main sections of your web site. The web is not linear; we don’t read web pages like books. Cross-reference everything, and make sure your visitors don’t get stuck in some dead end of the site where they can’t get back to the beginning. Remember that your visitors aren’t going to have the same sense of the site as you do. We need help figuring out where everything is!

  Include a descriptive title on each page. Choose a single background colour or graphic for the entire site so visitors have consistency, and always know they’re at the same site. Use short paragraphs rather than long solid blocks of text. Short paragraphs are easier to read on a screen, and make it less likely that you’ll lose our attention.

  Spell check your text. Don’t use glaring colours. If you know your writing skills aren’t great, hire someone to do the writing for you. People’s attention span on the web is fairly short. You have to hook your visitors with the main information right away, and you have to make sure they don’t get lost.

  To get people’s attention online, and to get us to actually read the content of your page, you should try to keep it as simple, clear, and interesting as possible. Visitor feedback is an important source of suggestions about your web site. If someone tells you that she found the site difficult to navigate, chances are that most of your visitors also think that way.

  The easier the information is to access, the more we can all learn from each other through our diverse web sites. Your web site will be the first point of contact with you or your organzation for many, many people, and we all want that first contact to be as easy and informative as possible!

  Good luck!

  fullmoon@euronet.nl
  www.cyberspc.mb.ca/~fullmoon

  | Top | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |
  | Part 6 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 |
  | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Home |