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First Impressions are Everything
Looking good on the Web is essential and can be realistically done by sticking to some good design principles. Having a website that is easy to navigate is also fundamental. Doing both at the same time can be very challenging. We stick to both principles in designing the perfect interface for your site. One that will cater to the audience you are trying to reach.
Points to Remember:
Make your Web pages free-standing:
World Wide Web pages are different from books and other documents in one crucial respect: hypertext links allow users to access a single Web page with no preamble. Thus Web pages need to be more independent than pages in a conventional book. This usually means that the headers and footers of Web pages are more informative and elaborate than printed pages. It would be absurd to repeat the copyright, author, and date of a book at the bottom of every page, but individual Web pages often need such information because a single Web page may be the only part of your site some users ever see. This problem of making documents free-standing is not unique to Web pages. Professional journals, magazines, and most newspapers repeat the date, volume, and issue numbers at the top or bottom of each printed page because they know that their readers often rip out newspaper articles or photocopy pages from journals and need that citation information to trace the original source of the article.
Given these potential difficulties in creating Web sites that are both easy to use and full of complex content, the best design strategy is to consistently apply a few basic document design principles in every Web page you create. The basic elements of a document aren't complicated, and have almost nothing to do with Internet technology. It's just like high school journalism class: who, what, when, and where.
Push for a User-centered design:
Graphic user interfaces were designed to give people direct control over their personal computers. Users now expect a level of design sophistication from all graphic interfaces, including Web pages. The goal is to provide for the needs of all of your potential users, adapting Web technology to their expectations, and never requiring the reader to simply conform to an interface that puts unnecessary obstacles in their paths.
This is where your research on the needs and demographics of your target audience is crucial. It's impossible to design for an unknown person whose needs you don't understand. Create sample scenarios with different types of users seeking information from your site. Would an experienced user seeking a specific piece of information be helped or hindered by your home page design? Would a novice be intimidated by a complex text-based menu? Testing your designs and getting feedback from users is the best way to see whether your design ideas are giving users what they want from your site.
Build clear navigation aids:
At the current state of web technology most user interactions with Web pages involve navigating hypertext links between documents. The main interface problem in Web sites is the lack of a sense of where you are within the local organization of information. Clear, consistent icons, graphic identity schemes, and graphic or text-based overview and summary screen can give the user confidence that they can find what they are looking for without wasting time.
Users should always be able to easily return to your home page, and to other major navigation points in your local site. These basic links, that should be present on every page of your site, are often graphic buttons that both provide basic navigation links, and help create the graphic identity that signals the user that they are still within your site domain.
Give users direct access:
The goal here is to provide the user with the information they want in the fewest possible steps, and in the shortest time. This means you must design an efficient hierarchy of information, to minimize the number of steps through menu pages. Interface studies have shown that users prefer menus that present a minimum of five to seven links, and that users prefer a few very dense screens of choices over many layers of simplified menus.
Do not forget about Bandwidth:
Users will not tolerate long delays. Human-factors research has shown that for most computing tasks the threshold of frustration is around 10 seconds. Web page designs that are not well "tuned" to the network access speed of your typical users will only frustrate them. If your users are primarily general public browsers "surfing" the Web via 28.8 kbps phone line connections it is foolish to put huge bitmap graphics on your pages the average user will not be patient enough to wait endlessly while your graphics download over the phone line. However, if you are building a university or corporate Intranet site where most users will be accessing your Web server at Ethernet speeds or better you can be much more ambitious in your use of graphics and multimedia.
Stick to Simplicity and consistency:
Users are not impressed with complexity that seems gratuitous, especially users who may be depending on your site for timely and accurate work-related information. Your interface metaphors should be simple, familiar and logical to the audience if you want a metaphor for information design, choose a book or a library, not a spacecraft or a television set. The best information designs are the ones most users never notice.
For maximum functionality and legibility your page and site design should be built on a consistent pattern of modular units, all sharing the same basic layout grids, graphic themes, editorial conventions, and hierarchies of organization. The goal is to be consistent and predictable, so that your users will feel comfortable exploring your site, and confident that they know how to find what they are looking for. The graphic identity of a series of pages in your Web site provides visual cues to the continuity of information.
Design stability:
If you want to convince your users that what you have to offer is accurate and reliable you will have to design your Web site just as carefully as you would any other type of corporate communication, with the same high editorial and design standards. A site that looks sloppily-built, with poor visual design and low editorial standards will not inspire confidence in your users.
Functional stability in your Web design means keeping the interactive elements of your site working reliably. Functional stability has two components getting things right the first time as you design your site, and then keeping things functioning smoothly over time. Good Web sites are inherently interactive, with lots of links to local pages within the site, and links to other sites on the Web. As you create your design you will need to constantly check to be sure that all of your links work properly. things change quickly on the Web, both in your site and everyone else's. You will need to periodically check to be sure that your links are still working properly, and that the content they supply is still relevant to your needs.
Provide Feedback and dialog:
Your Web design should offer constant visual and functional confirmation of the user's whereabouts and options, via graphic design, navigation buttons, or uniformly-placed hypertext links. Feedback also means being prepared to respond to your user's inquiries and comments. Well-designed Web sites should always provide direct links to the site's editor or the "webmaster" responsible for running the site. Planning for this kind of on-going relationship with the users of your site is vital to the long-term success of the enterprise.
Excerpts from Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton.
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