Rules to go by when starting a website.

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:56:01 -0500

A navigation should not be hard to find.
I am of the opinion that a website’s navigation should be one of the most prominent elements on a website. If I have to search for a while to find your navigation I’m going to go on to a website that’s easier to pilot through. News websites, and even a few very prominent ones, are notoriously user-unfriendly. It’s nice to be clever with a navigation but don’t recreate the wheel. Really, just put the navigation somewhere that people will notice it. If it’s off in Wonderland I’m not going to try to find it. Your navigation should be intuitive
Keep animated GIFs to a minimum.
The simple fact of the matter is that if you still think that flashing images look good on a website chances are, you just traveled forward in time from 1995 and have more important things on your mind, as do I. First off, how the hell did you make a time machine and why did nobody know about this before? Can I take a spin? How’s Doc?

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about check out LingsCars.com
WoRdz WrITtEn lYkE THiS!!11!one!!! are annoying.
This is annoying enough when people type like this on their Facebook profiles and whatnot, but it’s even more annoying when it’s formatted on a website. First of all, it’s incredibly hard to read. Second of all, it’s not cute; it’s annoying. Third of all, it makes your website look trashy, no matter how nice the design is.
Resizing of the browser window for your user is never okay.
I hate it when I go to a website that resizes my browser window for me. My browsing experience is very personal to how I do things and the second a website resizes a window for me I have to resize it back to how I had it before. The website should not, in fact, do anything other than load in a browser window that I already have open.
Pop-ups are reader-repellent.
Nobody likes popups and there is no excuse for them in any form these days. Hear that? NO excuse. Whether you use popups for advertising, login forms, extra content, news, etc, I will not be looking at it because I’m not going to disable my popup blocker for your website. Nobody should ever use popups. EVER. Popups show a distinct lack of respect for the visitor and will result in users not coming to your website. Besides, content ads are just as effective and aren’t usually annoying.
Contextual in-text link advertising is misleading.
Text link ads are the ads that you put on your website that highlight and link certain words and turn them into advertisements. This is INCREDIBLY annoying because it makes it hard to tell which links on your website are links and which are ads. It’s very easy to hover over one of this links accidentally, bringing up a small window that obscures the text one is reading. Annoying.
Empty space ads are the worst idea ever.
Similarly, empty space ads (ads that situate themselves wherever there isn’t content) are annoying because they never work well and often end up over a body of text.
Ads that expand and cover the content will get me (and, presumably, most people) to leave your website.
You know what? The only ads that you should ever have are in-content banner ads and the like. Everything else is annoying. Personally, I prefer to put ads at the very top of the website and under the navigation.
Start on load music players are inexcusable.
While browsing the internet randomly (or Stumbling, as it were) I am usually listening to music on iTunes or watching a TV show on Hulu or something similar. If some random music starts playing without my consent I won’t even bother to try turning it off, I will close out of the website and blacklist it from my memory.
Start on load video players are also inexcusable.
See #6 and replace “random music” with “random video”. In the second sentence.
Video ads that start on load.
AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WILL DESTROY YOUR WEBSITE.
“Can’t view the fonts on this page? Download these because we’re too good for headline images!”
No. For the love of all that is holy, no! If you want to use a fancy font for a headline or anything else it needs to be an image.
Frames were almost cool for a second at the peak of their popularity in the early 1940’s. Almost..
I can’t believe that frames are still an issue these days. Just don’t use them. Seriously.
Websites designed entirely in Flash are clunky and usually take too long to load.
While one can make a rather elegant website entirely in Flash it isn’t at all necessary, and it usually takes too long to load. Flash is a supplement to web design and is not intended to be used to create an entire website. Hell, go to Macromedia’s website. Even they don’t use flash for their entire website. Why? Because it’s clunky and basically makes your memory implode. Use Flash sparingly.
A good design is vastly important.
This may or may not bother others as much as me since I’m a designer, but I have a hard time taking a website seriously if the design is horrible. A website could have the best content ever but if it breaks every rule of web design I’m probably going to move on. A good design is one of the most important parts of having a successful website. If your design it terrible there’s a fairly good chance that people will go to a better designed website, even if their content is worse than yours.
Hard to read text is annoying and generally detrimental to your traffic.
I refuse to strain to read content. It should be the webmaster’s job to make me want to read the content, I shouldn’t struggle to read it because it’s poorly colored, all italic, poorly aligned , or otherwise hard to read. The bulk of a website’s content should be in a basic font. Think Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, etc. One of these days I’ll write an entire article on font choice. The prettier or more “awesome” your font is the greater likelihood that your readers won’t be able to read it. Save your fancy fonts for titles. Oh, and for the love of all that is holy, if I see one more site using freaking comic sans as the content font I will destroy the internet.

Content text should be simple, in high contrast to your background, and appropriately sized. Consider your readership as well. If you’re making a website for the sight impaired consider having an option to increase the font size, or a function for the text to be read aloud for those who are blind.
Lack of consistency is usually confusing.
This isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but every part of your website should appear cohesive. If each new page feels like a new website your user will get confused. A general rule of thumb is to have a consistent header and navigation location on the website.
Poorly written or lacking content defeats the purpose of having a website.
There’s really no point in having a website if you have little, no, or poorly written content. Why bother hiring a designer if you have nothing to put into the design when she or he’s done? This does greatly vary on what kind of website you’re running, but content is key.
Random errors are annoying.
One too many 404 errors and I’ll be gone.
“This website doesn’t work in Firefox. Please download Internet Explorer.”
No.

A user shouldn’t have to work to see your website; you need to optimize for all browsers. Why the hell are you using Internet Explorer anyway? Is Bill Gates paying you? No? Then stop it.

If your designer or coder tells you that he or she can’t get something to work in a specific browser you need to run, run like the wind!
Simplify your domain/title.
The simpler and easier to remember your domain name and title the more likely that you’ll have returning users. Avoid replacing words for numbers as this creates a verbal disconnect and pretty much destroys any chance of receiving word-of-mouth traffic. If someone tells me to go to “this website for cool stuff dot com” I will most likely go to “thiswebsiteforcoolstuff.com and not “thiswebsyte4coolstuf.com”. Unless they’re a 13 year old girl, that is.

Furthermore, your domain name should be exactly the same or very, very similar to your website title. If you’re using an acronym as your domain you should most often refer to your website using that acronym instead of the full title. Make your domain as short as possible.

Just a note: buy your domain and buy some hosting. Nobody wants to go to a website fraught with ads under the domain brosephscoolstufffosho_1001.blogsnstuff.yaheee.yoogle.co.me. Nobody will ever remember how to get to your website.
Slow downloads will lose users..
Your website should be quick with loading time. A good rule of thumb is to try to make sure that your website loads in under 10 seconds on a 56kb modem.
Keep extra stuff to yourself.
Many inexperienced webmasters have a tendency of cluttering up a website with stat counters, awards, and various other things that are of no use to your users. Keep superfluous design elements to a minimum. You can have a page for all of that stuff, and there’s no reason to make your stat counter visible. On that note, nobody needs a 400x700px Twitter feed. Ever.
Your headings should be easily distinguished from your content.
A bleeding headline is okay sometimes, but it should still obviously be a heading. This is what heading tags were made for.
Your content must be original and informative.
If you simply steal from Wikipedia and other websites what’s the point of me reading your website anyway?
Simplify.
This is quite possibly the most important rule in web design. Make your designs nice and simple. Simple is good. Simple is wonderful. Just simplify.
ALL OF YOUR TEXT DOES NOT NEED TO BE IN CAPS
Using caps should be reserved to text that needs to be in great contrast to other text, or if you feel the need to yell your content. Most people will read all caps text as yelling if it’s not obviously a headline or acronym.
Horizontal scrollbars are generally inadvisable.
The vast majority of users have a resolution above that of 1024x768. I tend to keep my design width around 960px for that reason. This rule isn’t concrete as I’ve seen some amazing websites that scroll horizontal instead of vertically, but newer designers should avoid horizontal scrolling at all costs.
Fancy cursors
Never use javascript to make the user’s cursor fancy. It’s unnecessary and amateurish.
Oh look, the website is snowing!
I get it. It’s the holiday season and you’re really excited about. You can make your design festive, but for the love of god do not apply javascript snow to your website. It’s incredibly distracting and makes your website look tacky.

Gregory Allen Porter Design

Rules to go by when starting a website.