Saturday, July 26, 2008

5 points- Web design (1)

1) Home page


Survey says out of all the web pages existing in the world only 0.4% of pages are visited by the users. To make your home page count within this 0.4% is tough. More tough is to retain this position for long.
The home page is usually the most visited page of your site. Its always smart to keep the visitors engaged here.
  • Most important content or the first thing you want to place infront of your visitors should always get a prominent place in your site.

  • Keep the language as simple as possible. The content matter should be fresh and nicely formatted.

  • Try to keep site's intro text within 20 words . Most visitors read this much only on any home page, the Web design guru Jakob Nielsen says here.

  • Get a clear idea of your target audience and how to sustain their interest on your page.

  • Studies say that in an average a minimum of 5 lines are read by the viewers. Important things which we want the viewers to explore should be linked or mentioned within the vertical space of 800px from top. This may vary to some extent as computer screens are available in wide range of dimensions these days.

  • Do not make the page overloaded with your content. Its here where your designing skill is required.

  • Try and follow some studies on the 'viewing patterns' of the net users. Here is a good article form Useit.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

5 points- site design

Any site design is incomplete without a proper usability thought. Site usablity is some thing which every designer or site owner is concerned with in recent times. There was a time when site designers and developers were not much aware of the advantages of the term 'usability'.

'5 points- site design' may sound like an incomplete article. Well, I feel usablity is something which will differ for different user groups. These 5 points are some basic ones which are needful for any designer designing any site, for any product, for any user.

1. Important contents within the first screen
2. Fast loadable page, else the user will move to the next similar site
3. Distinct hyperlinks with prominent visible colors.
4. Homepage should be the starting point of your site.
5. no frames, no pop ups as these things detest the users.

We'll discuss these one by one in my coming posts...