When it comes to designing a web site there are certain steps that you follow and certain steps that you avoid. Some designers just can’t get around some of the “steps” that you must not do.
Sometimes though it can’t be avoided but other times it can. What I hope to accomplish now is to try and enlighten you on the things that should really be done on a website, mainly the top 10 things you shouldn’t do on a website.
The first thing that comes to mind is the resizing of the user’s browser window. Although this can be helpful, most people find it irritating and sometimes it might even confuse them. It just better to leave the browser window the standard size, something the user is use too.
Next on the list is not having your homepage automatically load. By this I mean asking the user if they want to go to the flash home page with all the cool animations or if they want to go to the basic html version of the homepage that has little or no animations. I know you are trying to cater for high and low speed internet but this is your site and you must just pick one, flash or html. What you can do is just add a skip button on the flash that loads as the homepage.
For number 3 we to websites that are created only with flash. While this is an interesting design it seldom works. It seldom works for one very big reason, flash take a while to load especially if you have a whole web site inside it.
The next thing that some people struggle with is making your website work over all the browsers. Not everyone uses the same browser. You must cater for everyone.
The next thing you should do should strike a nerve with everyone that uses the internet, the dreaded pop-ups. This is a huge no-no. There is no reason for a pop-up, all advertising and questions should be on the web site itself.
Another important thing to remember is the navigation of your site. Don’t use pictures to take the user somewhere. It is quicker to read text than it is to look at a picture to take you to a different part of the site.
Unless you have a forum or your site is a search engine itself, there is no reason to have a search engine in your site to find information that is somewhere in your site. A well structured and thought out site will keep them coming back.
Another thing you don’t want to do is to try and lead the user to the message of your website. What I mean by that is if you have 10 pictures for example of products and the one the user wants is number 5, you don’t want the user to have to go through all of the other items just to get to the one they want. A table of contents or a previous/next button or even thumbnails will do the trick.
If you are going to be using video for your website, make sure that it doesn’t start when the page loads. Some users have a limited amount of internet usage and they might not want to waste it on a video. The same thing goes for music.
The last thing that you shouldn’t do on a website is just use pictures. When your sire is listed in the search engine, the search engine will index certain text in the website, not pictures.
If you follow these simple guidelines you should end up with a functional site and happy users.
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