Web design, a few simple rules.

Steve — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:31:30 +0000

One of my passions if you like is to learn more about how to create websites that conform to a few basic rules that are 90% of the time missed out by simple page builder software and online site builders. Following these simple to implement rules usually ensures, among many other things, stuff like:

1) Showing up in search engine results pages (serps) through SEO – (here are some (not all) hot tips some people charge a lot of money to share!) keyworded image alt and link title tags, h1 & h2 tags at least for content titles and sub-titles, a good title tag, text links not graphical buttons for menus/navigation, placing javascript etc in external files, adding an .xml sitemap and lastly keep using the description meta tag… although now deprecated for search engine ranking description meta does tell the search engine what text to display in the snippet shown below the blue link in the results pages. Reciprocal linking with other similar topic related sites/blogs is also vital.

2) Showing a reasonably similar appearance in the major browsers

3) Web safe colours and fonts – people go to a lot of trouble to design their site using a font they downloaded not realising it will just default to a serif or sans-serif regular font on every browser in the world on computers that don’t have that same font installed.

4) Usability for others, you might instinctively know your way around your site but a first time visitor may well be lost if you don’t follow simple rules or expectations like:

4i) Logo top left or top right (usually top-left) should always be a link back to the homepage.

4ii) Navigation menus should always remain in the same place on a page – if it’s in the left column on the homepage, keep it there on all the other pages – and be one click away from the homepage or top level pages. I hate clicking a link, getting to that page then finding all navigation has moved or vanished totally leaving me the back button on my browser as the only means of getting back… I’ll just go to Google and find a site that works, goodbye potential customer, gone for good!

4iii) Search Feature – if it’s a big site help your users find what they want with a built in search feature. Most people on ye goode olde tinterwebs are looking for something (often while at work or in a hurry), if they can’t find it on your site they will quickly go elsewhere so help them find it! Wave goodbye once again…

5) Images & links should always be given alt and title tags respectively not just for SEO but for text only browsers like Lynx and screen reader software too. Links should also be given a “focus” state similar to a hover state that tells you it’s a link (often an underline that vanishes on hover) when you hover your mouse cursor over it, the focus state is for people navigating via a keyboard and not a mouse and highlights the links when the TAB button is pressed.

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Web design, a few simple rules.