Web design is as varied as any other kind of design, and not everything will appeal to everyone under every circumstance. But there are a few unwritten rules that any successful website should follow. If nothing else, keep these tips in mind when you are designing the layout, theme and format of your website. These are specifically tips on design, not tips for content or anything like that.

• No Pop-Ups - The time of the pop-up ad has come and thankfully gone. They are annoying and usually of very low quality (who needs more smileys?). It may seem like a tempting way to get ads clicked on, but it just doesn’t work, and will lead to more lost readers than advertising bucks.
• No Blinking or Spinning Stuff - While I’m talking about annoying your readers, I’ll mention this one. No graphics that flash, blink, spin or bounce. Its distracting and kind of childish. This point also includes excessive use of Flash animations. While they can be slick and modern-looking, they make a site slower to load and may not really add any value to your site.
• Keep it Easy to Read - Background images are lovely, as long as you don’t try to display text over them. Your text should be large enough to read, and with enough contrast against the background to be clear and readable. The text doesn’t need to be bright red and the size of a kindergarten work sheet either. Choose a simply font too. A font that looks like old English calligraphy is going to get hard on the eyes, fast.
• Not Too Wide - Having the text area of your page too wide across the screen can make it difficult to read. The lines of text shouldn’t be longer than 600 pixels. I can’t give you a character count, because it depends on your font and typeface size. If you are using a “fluid-width” type of layout, then this can be a challenge, because your pages will display differently depending on how large your readers monitors are. A fixed-width format might work better for a site designed for “readability”.
• Lots of Navigation - There should be a basic menu of readable links available at all times, either as a bar along the top or in a column along the left or right sides. Don’t hide the links in some kind of graphic image map. Make your pages easy to find so that people don’t have to click 5 or 6 times to get to what they are after. A clear link back to the main page is a must for every page of your site. A prominent search box is extremely helpful, providing it works well. Most CMSs have search features built. Test it out though. A badly functioning search box is worse than no search box as all. A site map is another handy tool, that lists out all the pages in a nested list on one single page. I have one at my genealogy website, for example.
• Ads are for Your Readers - Don’t clutter up your pages with ads that are designed only to make you money and offer nothing to your readers. If you are writing about gardening, you don’t need big ads that offer people ways to make money with their blogs, or great big widgets showing off the last 50 people to visit your site. Ads and other components designed to help you promote your site are a waste of space. Ok, you can have 1 or 2, but keep it to a minimum. Services that YOU are interested in as a site owner are not necessarily the same things your readers want. That also includes having a huge column of those little chicklet things, showing off how many blog or site catalogs you belong too. I have 2 or 3 of them, but I’ve seen sites with 25-50. Do your readers really care?
• Keep Things Current - Even if you aren’t providing a “timely” topic on your site, don’t leave things on your main page that look dated. Don’t refer to long-past events, or have timestamps on articles (even if the content is still useful).

And a few more quick formatting points that don’t really require much explanation:

• Use spellcheck, or better yet, actually learn how to spell
• Don’t underline words unless they are links
• Give your readers a way to contact you
• Make sure your links work

Ok, now I’m sure some of these are obvious and not new, but you’d be surprised how many professionals still create terrible websites by breaking some of these simple rules. Check out Web Pages that Suck for lots of examples of bad web design. By seeing some of these problems in action, it might make them easier to understand.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 9:34 am and is filed under Writing Tips, Website Creation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.