Tips for creating a viewer-friendly web site
So you’d like to build a web site, but it’s all a bit new to you? By keeping a few key tips in mind you can design a site with viewer-friendly pages that will not only help your viewers enjoy visiting your site but will also help present your message more effectively.
1. Use proper grammar
A site which uses proper grammar creates a more professional impression on the viewer; conversely, a site with grammar mistakes can make a very negative impression. Always use proper sentence structure and punctuation. Check for correct spelling of all words; use a spell-checker if your computer has one. Avoid using all capital letters, as this is the online equivalent of yelling at the viewer; rather, use upper- and lower-case letters as is appropriate. Have someone else with good grammar skills proofread your pages to catch mistakes.
2. Break it up!
A web page which contains too much text causes the viewer to have to repeatedly scroll down to continue reading. Even worse, it can cause a viewer to lose interest and skim instead of reading, or leave and move on to another site. Keep your text concise and to the point. Use multiple shorter pages linked together for easy navigation rather than one long page filled with pages worth of text.
3. Use images effectively
A site overloaded with images may appear gaudy, and can take a long time to load for viewers with slower internet connections. Slow-loading sites cause viewers to grow impatient and move on to another site instead. Keep your site loading efficiently and present your message best by using images sparingly and only when directly relevant to the site’s content. Resize images so that they appear at an appropriate size; large images like desktop wallpapers will load very slowly for dial-up users and should be sized down. Use a standard optimized image file format such as .gif or .jpeg for saving your images; these formats provide a smaller file size which loads more quickly for the viewer.
4. Keep it clean!
Provide a professional-looking site by keeping it well-organized and clear of distracting elements such as blinking or scrolling text. Select text and background colors that have enough contrast to make for easy reading… for a great article with further detail on color selection, see Color for Coders . Keep a check on all links you have included and remove any which become “dead” or outdated. Use a consistent design with the same background and text colors from page to page for a uniform-looking site.
For more tips on good web site design, see Good Web Design Features and Web Hints: Web Design . See Original Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design and Bad Design Features for common design mistakes.