General
Webdesign Tips 1 to 10
1.
Always make sure your website
is designed and suitable for
all the different screen resolutions
that your users may have. This
can range anywhere between 800
X 600 and 1280 X 1000. Consider
designing your website with
its contents contained inside
a table. This can use relative
sizing and can fill all screen
sizes.* Check Table Techniques.
*Keep in mind that minimum
width will still have to account
for the 800 x 600 users.
2.
Theme your website.
You can achieve this by using
graphical background images
or a colour theme based on a
company's logo or colours. This
will keep the site looking consistent
and will make the users feel
comfortable and at home, e.g.
a pet store might have paw prints
as the background image on the
website. It also immediately
allows the user know what type
of website they are on. Check
Website Themes.
3.
Ensure that
you choose suitable background
images/colours that the user
can still clearly read text
without any difficulty. Colour
blind people can not easily
see some contrasting colour
when they're placed beside each
other, i.e. Green on Red. Check
out www.w3c.org
for colour considerations.
Check Colour Considerations.
4.
Always provide
an alternative navigation system
in the form of text links. These
are best to be placed at the
bottom of each page on your
website. Not only do these provide
a consistent navigation system
as well as allowing the user
to be able to navigate if they
have scrolled down the page.
Check Web Page Navigation.
5.
It's a good
idea to use ALT tags on all
the images on your website.
ALT refers to an alternative
text description that can be
placed behind images. This will
appear if there is an error
or if users pause the mouse
over an image. These will also
increase your ranking with search
engines with keyword hits. You
can place a max. of 1056 characters
in every ALT tag.
6.
One of the biggest failings
in website design is poor or
confusing navigation. Create
clear navigation systems that
allow the user to navigate throughout
any part of your website. Remember
that your users may have varied
skill levels and hence you must
account for all of them. Interactive
navigation may be fun and original
although you may lose or intimidate
some of your users. Provide
a minimum of two navigation
systems (text links) and where
possible a Sitemap or Site Search.
Check Web Page Navigation.
7.
Keep web pages
as short and to the point as
possible. Reams of text on screen
can be tiring to read, costly
and unnecessary. Provide content
in point format if possible.
Use hyperlinks so the user can
drill down to another web page
to get further information.
8.
Try not to use
images just for the purpose
of it. Always ask the benefit
every image will have on a web
page. Remember that there are
still users using 56k modems
with very slow connections.
A web page heavily laden with
images may be bypassed if the
user is left waiting to long.
Regular Net users will wait
10/20 seconds on average. Check
Optimisation Tips.
9.
Keep webpage
file size low. A good target
webpage size is 80kb inclusive
of all images. This will take
approx. 20 seconds to download
over a standard 56k modem with
an average connection. Check
External Java Scripts and CSS.
10.
Optimize any
GIFs/JPEGs that you use on a
website. Keep image size below
30KB and slice any images that
is larger in size that you wish
to use. A 100KB image sliced
into 10 pieces will download
remarkably faster than one 100KB
image. Check Slicing.
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