Basic Rules for Web Sites April 29, 2007
Posted by Lucanos in : Uncategorized , add a commentIt’s surprising how far we have come with regards to web development in such a short amount of time. I can remember the good/bad old days of monochrome displays, bulletin-boards which you needed to know the phone number to dial into using your 9,600 baud rate modem, arrangements where you had to upload something onto the BBS before you were permitted to download anything.
I remember the first days of the web, with pages that started as nothing but links, then when someone found the wonders of animated GIFs, then all the way through until what we have today, with CSS, Flash, RSS, and a bunch of other acronyms which are thrown around more than understood.
But, with all this advancement, it seems that alot of sites have forgotten some of the simple design rules which helped the net to gain its widespread popularity and perceptions of ease of use which permeate most of the net-connected society today. So, in the interests of getting it clear in my mind as much as helping anyone else out there who have any doubts, I will try and detail some of, what I consider, the basic rules of webdesign for the modern web.
- Banner/Logo = Link to Home
It’s upsetting how many designers seem to forget this very simple rule. Whilst we all try and make our menus and navigation systems as easy to understand and use as possible, the over-ruling fact is that with most usable websites their homepage still forms the hub for the entire site - all of the major links are displayed there, as are links to the main categories or navigational streams available.
So, someone Googles you, or follows a Del.icio.us link to an article or page on your site, and they want to have a poke around - they instinctively click the Logo or Banner you have prominently displayed at the top of every page on your site… Nothing happens… Now they have a couple of choices - look for the “Home” link in one of your navigational panels, edit the URL in the address bar and try and backtrack that way, or walk away. Unless your product or service is really intriguing, the later will be their most likely choice.
So, for the cost of a simple … link, a visitor, and a potential user/customer is lost. - Easy to Find Contact Details
Whilst PHP and Formmail, and a pile of other “enhancements” have been developed and are used in alot of websites, sometimes people like the familiarity and trackability of sending an email from their own mailbox. By all means, offer the fully automated and web-based options, but adding an email address which can be used at the reader’s pleasure, or in the case of the form system failing (as was a recent experience for one of my clients, who was unable to communicate with their customers for a number of hours - without knowing there was a problem!).
Again - a simple solution for a potentially costly problem. - Graceful Degradation - Flash
Yes, Flash and other animated options are wonderful and allow for a more visceral option for your visitors to explore you, your products/services and your site, there are some instances where building everything in Flash will absolutely kill your site for some visitors. Especially with the expansion of mobile-based browsing (via GSM handsets, or the upcoming iPhone style devices), limiting your viewing audience to those who have an 800px by 600px screen and a Flash enabled browser is, again, cutting you off from a user/customer audience.
If you use Flash, either allow users to opt-in for it to be displayed, use JavaScript to sniff for Flash-enablement (along with any other limitations such as screen size) before using a DHTML-like action to initiate the Flash component. - Graceful Degradation - JavaScript
Yes, OK, so, JavaScript is nearly ubiquitous now within the framework of the Web2.0 framework, but, sometimes it is not available. Again, sometimes the accessing browser/device may not support it, or, in some cases, and with the clampdown on workplace internet usage, the use of proxies may result in JavaScript failing to operate.
AJAX is lovely, and can do some truly wonderful things from a bandwidth and user interaction point of view, however any links which you write which trigger an AJAX action should initially be coded as an old skool link so that, worst come to worst, a user will see no interruption to their service. They may see slower loading times, and more bulky navigation, but at least they will see something. - Licencing - Make It Easy To Use and It’ll Be Easy To Enforce
There has been some debate around the use of Creative Commons licencing on the internet, and some conflicts over it’s usability, legality and enforceability. The simple realisation is this - unless you have the time, energy and backing to chase after copyright violators who use your photos, content, plugins, etc. you are far better off distributing them under an Open Source licence such as the GNU GPL or a Creative Commons licence. The reason? These licences are pretty stock-standard, well know, well understood and very easy for people to comply with. Compare someone just downloading your content from your site and using it (with embedded linkbacks, etc.) to someone having to email you for a licencing discussion, negotiate a price or arrangement, then use your content/material.
To put it in a different light, if cars were $600,000 a piece, but didn’t have door locks, people would steal them left right and centre. If they cost $5 instead, we’d see no reason to steal them anymore. - Statistics Are Nice, But Not At The Cost Of Speed
Now many times have you accessed a site only to see the loading indicator keep ticking over as your statusbar advises you that you are still loading content from Google Analytics, or a similar service. If you want to track your users, by all means, do it, but make sure that it does not slow down their use of your site. If it does (and they are geeky enough), they’ll often resort to using systems like “AdBlock Plus” to prevent the statistics material from ever being loaded.
OK, so maybe not as simple a set of rules as I may have started with, but some basic ideas all the same.
As they say - focus on the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.