A Few Assorted Pointers

In general, anything standing between your visitor and the information or service that they came to your site to find must be carefully evaluated with a "why is this here" attitude. This especially applies to those us le less "Click Here To Enter" splash pages.

Exceptions exist to all rules. Don't make it your life's goal to peck them out and inflict them on others.

Most everything here is 'negotiable' to some degree. There may actually be a compelling reason to use a piece of blinking text, though the general rule says 'no.'

Some items, like standards compliance and browser testing are less flexible.

These pointers provide a small overview of options and considerations. To get the design process started, see "Strategic Web Design" and download the design worksheets available there.

A Website is Essentially a Multi-Media Production - Plan It As Such

"Design Your Site As If You Were Designing a PowerPoint Presentation to Run on a ten year-old computer with a black and white screen and a noisy dial-up Internet connection."

People Like Pictures!

As surprising as it may seem, people don't enjoy reading lines and lines of text on a computer screen. Special purpose sites excluded, a site with an interesting mix of photos, graphics and text gains a 1200% viewer retention advantage over similar sites that are text alone.

Add Value to The Internet - Don't Just Repeat What Is Already There

If All You Want to do is Put Your Brochure On-Line - Don't Expect Big Results - It's Better than Nothing, But Not Much.

The Rule of Thumb is 80% Education, Information and Entertainment, and No More Than 20% Marketing. (Utilitarian and Pure Customer Service Websites Excepted)

 

Make It Intuitive: Don't Make The Visitor Think!

Avoid clichés such as as "Click Here To ..." It Should Be Obvious Where To Click and What Will Happen When You Do.

Use Subdirectories to Organize The Content of your Server for Easier Site Management

Use Descriptive File Names - All Lower Case, No Spaces and No Punctuation Except the
Underscore ( _ ) Character.

MAC USERS NOTE - NO SPACES and YES the .jpg, .html and other file extensions are required.

Remember, UNIX/LINUX Is CAse seNSitive

Put a Mail To Button On All Pages - NO LONGER RECOMMENDED

The basic Mailto Tag looks like this:
<A HREF="mailto:you@you.xxx">you@you.xxx</A>

This, however, exposes your E-Mail address to the automated address harvesting robots used by Spammers.

To reduce the exposure of your address to such scum, it is best to design a Feedback Form for visitors to use to contact you. If properly designed, your E-Mail will be completely shielded from the Net at large.

Provide an HTML Only Site Map. Google likes to have an XML Site Map

NEVER Underline Anything Without GOOD Reason. Use Bold, Italic Color and/or Size to Emphasize Things, NOT Underlining. Underlining Makes Text Look Like There Is Something To Click When There Isn't! (Teasing your visitors)

Don't Unnecessarily Limit or Frustrate Your Visitors

 

Example (True Incident) 

For a more detailed look into Forms, see: HTML Forms Design Considerations

  Will Tablet, Wireless, PDA and Cell Phone users want or need to access your site  

If so, make certain to test your mobile version with the same equipment used by your visitors.

If not, ask yourself, why not?

Don't Irritate, Incriminate or Humiliate Your Visitors

 

Eliminate as much clutter and as many clicks as possible between the visitor and their goal 

A Prime Example:
     Tacky, time-wasting, animated, "Welcome To Our Site: Click Here To Enter" Splash Screens.

 

Avoid forcing visitors to listen to a sound file before the page loads 

Give Them the OPTION to listen - and link to it rather than embedding it. Business sites launching a sound file when a visitor hits a page are just plain rude!

    You know Murphy's Law don't you?

At the precise instant your Website starts playing that cute little jingle, your visitor's boss will walk by their cubicle and think they are playing games -- or worse!

Don't expose your visitors to needless liability 

If there are parts of your Website that could be 'inappropriate' for public viewing at your visitor's home, office, etc, make certain to warn them before displaying ANY of that content. Regardless of how innocent, artistic or clinical, the content may be, the same Murphy's Law that applies to music files applies here. Don't Embarrass or Incriminate Your Visitors

Do people REALLY care how many Awards you have won? (Unless You are "In The Business") 

If you want to clutter up your home page with self-serving narcissistic bling, go ahead. Otherwise, most people don't care to see it. If you're proud of it, give it a page of its own.

Give Everything the "Why Am I Doing This, and Why Is This Here?" Test 

If you can't come up with a good answer, don't do it or take it off!

Keep the Visitor Oriented

 

Menus and Other Navigation Aids are Critical 

• Put a link to the Home Page on every page
• For all but the most basic sites, a clean, HTML site map is essential. This map should show the entire structure and flow of your site at a glance.
• Many search engines will use your site map to 'crawl' pages that might not be linked elsewhere.
  (Google requires an XML Site Map)
• Very long pages should have a "Back to the Top" Button at the Bottom
• If you use Image Maps and Other Graphical Navigation Tools, Provide a Text/HTML Only Alternative 
• Any site more than a few pages might benefit from a Search Box or Engine. Google and Atomz Internal Search engines are very easy to incorporate into a site.
  

Avoid "Cutsie" Scrolling Banners in the Status Window 

• Some Browsers Have "Memory Leaks," and Those Scrolling JavaScript Banners Can Cause Out of Memory Errors After a Time.
• These Banners Also Interfere With the Status Messages and Link Displays In The Status Bar.

 

Avoid Needless Animations 

• See Above
• They Also Tend to Slow Everything Down
   

Please Don't Use Blinking Anything 

• See Above

Don't Use Multi-column Documents Unless They Fit On A Single Screen 

• These force the visitor to scroll down, then scroll back up to continue reading. (Browser Bounce)

There are a Lot of Old Browsers Out There.

Avoid Making Your Site Dependent on Flash, JAVA or Active-X Controls. If you want to add spice, do so by all means, but don't let it interfere with delivery of content if the visitor doesn't have, or want to turn on some specific browser feature. For a real test, hit your site with LYNX, a text only browser, or a basic cell phone browser.

Some General Pointers About Images 

Know When To Use Tools Other Than The Web

Mailing Lists, List Servers, E-Mail Auto-Responders and Fax Back often provide faster, less expensive and more widely distributed or tightly targeted services than The World Wide Web.

Let the World Know You Exist

 

Create Site Maps

Create a pure HTML or XML Site Map, with links to every critical page or section of your site in your sites the root folder. Name these sitemap.html and/or sitemap.xml

These two documents will help ensure that the search engines find and index as many of your documents as possible.

Create a robots.txt File 

A properly formatted robots.txt file in the root folder of your site will keep the major search engines from indexing the contents of files or folders that you don’t want included in the listings. These might be items that are still under development or that you do not want indexed and available to the World.

NOTE: The large, commercial search services are called "well-behaved" and will respect your robots.txt exclusions. Respecting this file is voluntary, so read their fine print to be sure.

Some poorly behaved robots, like the ones that scrape E-Mail addresses from websites, will attempt to explore any nook and cranny that they can find. Keep your confidential files away from your publicly accessible web folders.

Use Social Media When and Where Appropriate to help "Spread The Word"

In its infancy, social media was dominated by nerdy kids. Today, however, any person or company without a Social Media Presence is missing a major marketing opportunity.

From Facebook, Myspace and Twitter to more targeted media such as LinkedIn and various professional blogs, participation in social media must.

Those talented, insightful and lucky enough to have a link "go viral" can reap great rewards.

Use <meta...> Tags to Help the Search Engines Index Your Site

• Meta tags provide information about your Web page to some search engines and other programs.
• There are meta tags for page title, page description, and page keywords.
• The keywords tag is now essentially useless.
• Some search engines include page-title and page-description meta tags in your listing.
• If your Web page lacks a title tag, some search results display the phrase "No Title" or "Untitled" in the first line of your listing.
  • To control the title that appears with your listing, add a <title> tag with the title you want to appear.
    For example: <title>Employee Benefit Information</title>
  • The TITLE is also what appears in the visitor's Browser Title Bar when they visit your page and what appears in their Favorites file when they bookmark it. Therefore, always use a descriptive and unique title. For Example: <TITLE>Acme Corporation - Widget Home Page</TITLE>
        (NOT just "Our Home page")
• If your Web page lacks a description meta tag, search engines that use them generally display the first few words on the page as your listing description.
  • To control the description that appears with your listing, add a meta tag with the keyword "description" and the phrase you want to appear.
    For example: <meta name="description" content="Acmecorp Benefit Programs.">
• These tags also influence the ranking of your page for specific search terms.
• Be sure that your meta tags are within the head of your HTML Document.
     (ie between the (<head> & </head> tags)

Avoid Using Visible Hit Counters Without a Specific Need

• Counters Can Break
• They Can Be Very Inaccurate
• They Can Slow Down Page Loading
• Who Cares!
  The last time you went into a department store, theatre or gas station, did you run up and ask, "how many other people have been in here today?" 
• If You ABSOLUTELY MUST Use a Counter, Get One That Will Do More Than Count Hits. such as the service at Google Analytics or WebTrends. Server side log analysis software including; AWStats, Deep Log Analyzer, Webalizer can provide considerable insight into your traffic patterns.

Use Standards Compliant Code and Practices

• HTML 5.0 will soon become the new Standard. Almost as important as what is added new in HTML5 is what is no longer there. The FONT and CENTER tags are, as predicted, going away. Along with them are a plethora of old and deprecated tags and attributes. See: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.htmlfor an overview of HTML5
• If you use anything but the default fonts, make certain that Mac, PC and Unix/Linux visitors can view your page the way you intended.
• If you want a sans serif font, cover all your bases by including both the windows standard (arial) and the mac standard (helvetica) and a generic font style. (Sans-serif)
• It is possible to deliver True-Type fonts to the visitor's browser from your server. The process is not fast, and you must have the right to distribute the font. Also Internet Explorer is the usual wild card, and requires a slightly different approach than other browsers, but it can be done.
• Do not use the <font> ... </font> tag, it is deprecated. All style elements should now reside in a Style Sheet or Inline Style where possible.
• Tags, and attributes should be lower case.
• Values of attributes should always be in quotes.
• Comment your code, even if you will be the only one working on it. (You'll be glad you did.)
• Don't use the headline (header) tag <h1>....<h6> merely to change font sizes
  • Headers have a purpose, to divide your site into a logical outline format. If you have an <h4> it should be assumed that there is an <h1>, <h2> and <h3>
  • If you are not happy with the browser defaults for Headers (and most other elements) they are easily customized using CSS.
• Don't Abuse (or even use) Frames
  • Frames are being phased out for a number of reasons, not the least of which is security.
  • The latest versions of some browsers will not display frames by default.
  • The same effect can be achieved using DHTML and CSS.

Test Your Site

Test your site online using the popular browsers to make certain that all visitors can at least navigate your website and access critical content. .

• Firefox
• Internet Explorer
• Chrome
• Opera
• Safari
• Various Tablets and Mobile Devices

Test your site from another person's computer, on a dial-up connection if possible.

Test your site on a slow wireless connection.

Thorough testing can avoid situations like ...

Do not try to use your visitors as your testers, that is your job.

Keep It Fresh

Some purely utilitarian sites have no need to update their layout or content. If you want to draw repeat traffic, however, the secret is no secret -- keep it fresh and give the visitor one or more reasons to come back.

One of your goals is to end up in the visitor's Bookmarks or Favorite Places menus.

Maintain an opt-In, low-volume mailing list for announcements of site updates, and don't abuse it.

Contests and promotions can be an inexpensive way to draw traffic and collect content. Be certain, however, to run any contests by a lawyer beforehand. The Internet knows no boundaries and some of the State and Federal laws regarding contests, lotteries, raffles and promotions are extremely convoluted and confusing.

Active "backlinks" other popular websites and some social media sites will also help jump-start your search engine ratings.

Keep It Organized

 

Along with keeping it fresh comes keeping it organized. Highly dynamic sites have a tendency to take on a life of their own.

 

Link Rot - A Disease That Eats Away At Your Credibility. 

The foundation of the Web is a network of linked documents and resources. When those links break, however, the foundation of a Website starts to crumble.

As we all know, broken links are at the least, frustrating. As noted above, we don't want to frustrate our visitors, so regular link audits are a must.

If there are only a few links on your site, running through them by hand from time to time might be sufficient. Sites with a large number of links, especially when they are external, might benefit from a software-based link checker.

Links to external sites can be particularly troublesome, especially when those sites are frequently updated, or if they are links to smaller or personal websites. The link that used to carry a visitor to Angie's Barbie™ Doll Museum might now take them to Angie and Barbies House of Pain.
Don't Embarrass Your Visitors.

Have a Written and Published Privacy Policy

If you collect any personal information on your Website, a written policy governing how that information is treated is essential.

A simple "We don't share your E-Mail address with anyone." might be sufficient. The more information that you collect, the more detailed your Privacy Policy must be. Here is the Privacy Policy for this Website

 

If Your Website is of Interest to Children   

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, located at 15 U.S.C. § 6501–6506 (Pub.L. 105-277, 112 Stat. 2581-728, enacted October 21, 1998).

The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. jurisdiction from children under 13 years of age. It details what a website operator must include in a privacy policy, when and how to seek verifiable consent from a parent or guardian, and what responsibilities an operator has to protect children's privacy and safety online including restrictions on the marketing to those under 13. While children under 13 can legally give out personal information with their parents' permission, many websites altogether disallow underage children from using their services due to the amount of paperwork involved.

Again, with 'The L Word' 

For anything other than the most simple requirements, you should run your published privacy policy by your lawyer. If you don't have one, try to find one with an expertise in online law.

Improve Your Chances of Success -- Hire a Pro!

When your business is at stake, it's best to hire a specialist.

(Adv.) Hiring a pro is especially important when you enter the world of E-commerce Design.