Datasheet

Crowder c01.tex V3 - 05/26/2008 7:16pm Page 29
The Basics of Building Web Pages and Sites 1
Dos and Don’ts of Web Site Development
The reasons for good Web site design are obvious. You want visitors to your site to have a pleas-
ant productive experience when they do business with you. You not only want them to like
what you have to offer but also to appreciate the ease and convenience with which their online
shopping is done. You want customers to come back.
Tips for good Web sites
Here are ways to develop customer-friendly Web sites:
■ Take a minimalist approach — Customers come to your site for the content, not the
clutter. Limit the distracting eye candy.
■ Make navigation easy to use and understand — This means providing rapid access
to desired content within a few clicks.
■ Make the Web site fast-loading — Many people still use a dial-up connection to
the Internet. Too much animation can slow down the rendering of a Web page.
■ Skip the sticky advertisements that follow the cursor around like a lost pup —They
interfere with the reading of content and break the user’s train of thought. Many users
may soon remember those sites and avoid them. There are always others.
■ Skip the counters — Why broadcast this information? What do they add to your
site? In fact, some amounts could be quite small and convince the visitor that your site
is not popular.
■ Keep the information on your site current — This is not a Web-specific issue, but it
is implicit in the Information Age that information should be accurate and up to date.
■ Be grammatically correct — There are potential customers out there who believe that if
you can’t spell, you can’t be very good at your business, either. They will go elsewhere.
■ Do not assume your Web designers can spell or write a grammatically correct sentence —
Check your Web sites. Without being specific, there was actually an academic
institution’s Web site in Statesville, North Carolina (state-funded, of course), that had
mindless grammatical and spelling errors.
■ Be very sparing of sound effects or music — Not all people have the same tastes.
Not all people have the same audio cards or speakers. Also, keep in mind your visitors
may be browsing to your site at work and may annoy their coworkers.
■ Use thumbnails as a good aid to site content and navigation — Make certain that all
thumbnails are clickable, that they’re relevant to the content, and that the images
they link to load fast. Do not clutter the page with them.
■ Make contact info obvious — Even on a home page, include contact info such as
business name, address, e-mail address, fax number, and phone number — maybe even
two or three, such as generic office number, technical support number, and customer
support number. This saves clients a lot of time, and they do not need to guess which
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