Some of you have been doing web design for years and some of you only started a short while ago. Like it or not, you don’t learn everything and design college or university, some things you have to learn and experience on your own to learn. Here is a short list of some general practices to improve your design and layout skills, there is still alot more to come. by Kobus Swartz
1. Easy navigation for users
People need to get around on your website easily, have a clear navigation on your page that makes it easy for people to navigate your site, stay away from flash navigation menus that take too long to load. Make sure your navigation text is clear and easy to spot, don’t make the user look for your navigation and make them wonder where to next. This does not mean that you should use bright neon colors for your navigation, make sure to have an even color flow where your navigation layout and design compliments the rest of your website.
A good idea is to also implement a text based navigation at the bottom of your page, this makes it easier to navigate to other pages when the users is at the bottom of your page and does not have to scroll up to reach your navigation at the top.
Another important aspect to keep in mind is that your website navigation should be consistent on each page throughout your website. Don’t change the layout of your navigation on each page, don’t let the user work hard to find their way through your website.
2. Text should be text, not images.
This is an important aspect to keep in mind when designing pages, it’s not life threatening to your website or page but rather part of good web practice. Users go to your site for specific content, whether it be, images or text content, web users like to copy. So rather than typing your text in Photoshop with a fancy background and saving it as an image, use some CSS and still apply the text as “text” and implement a CSS background image behind your text.
3. Using PDF’s on your website
PDF’s are not a substitute for HTML pages and content. Good practice regarding PDF’s on your site will be to have an html page with the PDF content (in HTML format) and also then a link to download the PDF for portable and printing uses. Be nice and specify that the document they are going to download is a PDF and that they need a certain ‘add-on’ or application to view it.
4. Online Forms
When using a form on your website, make it easy to fill in and complete, whether it be a contact form, registration form or a survey. Most of the times people have a inline registration form on their site which people should fill in first before they can download content or use the site. Keep the form simple, the user isn’t filling out the form to apply for a new car or home loan application, they are only submitting their details so that they can access your website. A contact form usually consists of the following:
Name
Website
Subject
Message
Don’t add extra fields for their shoe size and their favourite color, excepts if you sell shoe’s or paint.
Make it clear what fields are required to be filled in and what not. Make sure that they give you the right info that they know what to fill I where, ie: some people will insert their phone number in the email field, use PHP or JavaScript form validation to prevent this from happeing.
5. Not styling all your text links
Imagine this, you have n neatly designed web 2.0 website with the perfect layout, look and feel. You used your CSS skills to style your elements to have a consistent look and everything looks great. But did you remember to style all of you’re a tags ? Did you style the active and visited a tags ? When someone clicks on a normal text link and and return to the page without all your text links being styled there is going to be an ugly bold text link standing out. Good practice will be to keep the same color of your visited and active tags the same as you’re a:link tag.
6. Don’t throw in a light box pop up when your page opens
I am sure that most of you have been to a site where before you can see the content of the page a light box appears asking you to register or get a subscription. This can be rather irritating to some visitors in the sense that they have to go through a bunch of unnecessary pages and links to actually reach the content that they were looking for. People that don’t know that the light box is only a advert or a subscription option will close the page and look for something else, if people want to register on your site they will go and register, don’t force people into viewing pages on your site which will waste their time.
by Kobus Swartz
