Awful Design Exists, Avoid It! Second Part
I’m sure you don’t like those unattractive pages that still surround the World Wide Web. Yes, 10 years ago, websites were made with a simple table, a superior bar, a graphic at the left and filled of endless text. Nowadays, thinking of that it’s something crazy… There are a lot of possibilities in web design and mistakes of the past must be overcome.
In the first part, we saw errors to avoid in web design. Enjoy the second part of this series, while you’re learning what you never have to do in web development:
- The website has to be easy to explore. None page must be more than two clicks away.
- For easier navigation, use text links. It’s faster and simple to understand than using images for creating links to another page.
- It’s much better if those links include relevant words of your site’s content (that’s known as keywords). ‘Click here’ is effective but anchor texts on links are the best.
- Users have to recognize what is a link, don’t hide it; make it obvious. It could be made underlining the word or contrasting colors. In the same way, the direction of each link you use has to be clear.
- Never underline or apply color to normal text. That is confused for users, because those words can look as a link.
- If you want to include a .doc or .pdf file, be sure to show people that the link is to download a file, not for going to another page. This is recommendable because sometimes, when Acrobat Reader or Microsoft Word is loading make the navigation slower. That’s annoying if you don’t want the file; so, be explicit and let people handle it.
- Advertising is necessary for any business, but avoid it inside the content. Sometimes you can get pages in which under the headline there is an ad or a banner; then a link, and finally the content. That doesn’t look so pretty and could be a nuisance. An annoyed visitor is a lost customer.
- Don’t force people to watch ‘intros’. Sometimes they are cute, but let them decide if they want to appreciate it or not. If the intro is long, I’m sure you leave the web page.
- Using Front Page isn’t recommendable. Yes, it’s an easy website editor, but too simple. Your page design could be incompatible with some browsers or have code problems.
Professionals in web design help you to overcome past mistakes in web development. Don’t take that process as a game; your company’s image on Internet depends on the design.