7 ways to keep your website design from sucking
An exceptional website is not as hard as you might think to create. Knowing what your trying to accomplish and staying focused is very important. It will help keep the site concise and more manageable.
The functional requirements of a great website will vary depending on what it is supposed to do. Whatever the site is supposed to do, make sure it dose it well and as simply as possible. Something basic but often overlooked that all exceptional websites have is a contact form rather than a mailto: link that opens the visitor's default email client. Why? Well, to start not everyone uses POP mail with a local client. Not everyone will be browsing from their own computer. On the positive side, having an easy to use contact form indicates a desire to communicate with your visitors.
The Information Architecture (IA) is possibly one of the most critical areas of the design of a site. The IA is basically how the site will be laid out, and how the visitor will be asked to navigate it. How will the navigation links be displayed? What resources should be placed on the index home page versus secondary pages? When a visitor comes to the site what are they looking for and how easy is it to find? When you are visiting a truly exceptional website, you never think about these questions. You simply look for a moment, then flow to where you want to be next. That is what great IA is about.
The style and aesthetics of the website will have a lot to do with how well you connect emotionally with your visitors. Excellent sites know their audience and are designed accordingly. You wouldn't do an ultra modern theme with techno music for a deli, and you wouldn't do a grunge style website for a fortune 500 company. High valued sites make their visitors feel comfortable and in their element.
Something that comes from Web Design 101, but somehow still seems to be relevant is the need to keep a site's load time down. A great website will not keep you waiting any longer than absolutely necessary. An experienced web user will know when your site is not optimized because so many other sites they visit are. It can be tempting to put a super duper flying 2MB Flash header on your home page, but don't. Exceptional websites load exceptionally fast.
A lot of quality information is always at the core of any great website. Without good content why would a visitor even want to come to your website? However, having exceptionally unique and valid information will set it apart as an exceptional site.
How current and up-to-date a site's information is can make or break it. Exemplary websites will always be 100% current and be used as an almost real-time communication tool to interact with their visitor base. Stale content, even if it was all the rage last month, often times just won't cut it for today's best websites.
Ensuring a visitors security while they are just visiting or making an online purchase is of the utmost importance. Exceptional sites go the extra mile to assess the risks that their visitors might encounter while visiting and do everything they can to both disclose and mitigate those risks. |