Important Rules of Web Design

Posted on April 23rd, 2008

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1. Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2. Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3. Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4. Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5. Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work.

Books on Web Design Rules

Search Engine Visibility

by Shari Thurow – Computers – 2003 . Thus, a perfectly good #1 search engine position can be wasted if your site designer does not consider download time, or any of the other design rules..

Handbook of Human Factors in Web Design

by Robert W. Proctor, Kim-Phuong L. Vu – Computers – 2005 . Example of Design Rules FIGURE 38.4. Types of guidelines and sources. Note. Recommendations include design rules and ergonomie algorithms..

Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference

by Jennifer Niederst Horizontal Rules The simplest element you can add to a web page is a the <hr> tag that allow authors to “design” rules more to their liking; however,.

The Online Rules of Successful Companies: The Fool-Proof Guide to Building

by Robin Miller – Business & Economics – 2002 . Basic Web Design Usability Rules This Web stuff is not brand-new anymore. We have enough experience with it that we can come up with rules that make a site.


Systems, Social and Internationalization Design Aspects of Human-computer

by Gavriel Salvendy, Michael James Smith – Human-computer interaction – 2001 . Design rules: they comprise a set of functional and/or operational specifications that specify the design of a particular user interface..

Professional Web Design: Techniques And Templates

by Clint Eccher, Eric Hunley, Erik Simmons – Computers – 2004 . Page 4 KNOWING THE SEVEN RULES OF WEB DESIGN There are seven basic rules that, if followed, will help a beginning or intermediate designer become a professional: .

Web Design Tools and Techniques

by Peter Kentie – Computers – 2002 . Web Design Rules Rules and laws apply to all professional areas. In professional Web design, some might assume that these rules are still under.

Learning Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web

by Jennifer Niederst Robbins – Computers – 2007 . You will find that there are already rules in the style sheet for changing the colors of the four link states. Start by turning the underline off for all of.

Web Standards Creativity: Innovations in Web Design with XHTML, CSS, and DOM

by Cameron Adams – Computers – 2007 . Accessibility is now very important in the field of web design. The rules of CSS Style sheets consist of a number of rules that define how various web.

Web Accessibility: Web Standards And Regulatory Compliance

by Jim Thatcher – Computers – 2006 . Statutes and Regulations A statute is an act of legislation declaring, commanding, or prohibiting something — such as a website design element..

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