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More commandments for Web designBy Jim Frazier Heavens to Betsy! I found, after publishing the last article, that I actually forgot some of the most important commandments of Web design. This article now completes the picture. I'm sure that never, in my wildest dreams, could I come up with any more. So never fear, this is the last you'll hear on this subject. Of that, I'm absolutely, positively certain. 1. Proofread. You don't want dopey spelling errors to damage your credibility, do you? Do you proofread your printed literature? Of course you do. Then why aren't you doing it for your Web site? In particular, if one person is working on your site, then it's best to have someone other than the writer doing the proofing. It's amazing what they'll find. Your Webmaster may be a heck of an engineer and can do wonders with HTML and Java, but he probably can't spell his way out of a paper bag. Don't let your investment be wasted by some recent college grad that spent all his time in computer class and blew off the English requirements. 2. Don't design your site for a specific browser. Inevitably, some of your users will be using the "other" browser. And they're not going to be inclined to download a new one just because you put a pretty little link on your page telling them to do so. There is absolutely no reason to program your site for one browser or the other. The only justification would be if you need a lot of multimedia or client-side programming. And if that's the case, expect to leave behind some portion of your audience. Besides, what are you going to do in a few years when the browser you've written to is superceded by some new product? It will happen. You're just going to have to program all over again. Stick to standards that will work on all browser platforms. If you're convinced you must have some functionality that only one of them will provide, heed my advice from the previous article and take a second look at your favorite sites. Do THEY write to specific browsers? 3. Don't put pages on the Web until they're ready. It used to be trendy, hip and cool to put "under construction" graphics all over your unfinished Web site. Now it just looks like you're not committed to the project, particularly when the "under construction" notices have been up for a year. If you have a page that's not ready to do, then don't put it up. Or only put up what IS ready. If you absolutely MUST have a placeholder page, then just put something along the lines of "We're not ready yet. Sorry." Don't be cute. Your user has just wasted time hitting an empty page. You're not making friends as it is. 4. Provide a welcome page. Provide at least one link on your main page to a "welcome" section that clearly explains what your company does and its value. While the main page can be cool, hip and oriented towards those with low attention spans, you should provide an option for people who can actually read. Give them a clear narrative that's easily accessible and will give your visitors the information they're looking for. You've got them at your site. Now make it clear what your site is all about. 5. Don't be obtuse. Using obscure words and symbols on your home page may seem cool, but why should your visitors have to scratch their heads wondering what a "war room" is? I visited a site recently where the links were labeled "war room", "MBA", "workshop", "work smart" and others. There was no explanation of what these meant. And when I clicked on "this week" the explanations weren't any better. The designers of this site were in love with how hip they were, but weren't making the site accessible to unhip slugs like me. Even their affiliation ads were obscure. I might have been interested in some of them, but without some idea of what they did, I didn't feel like wasting the time to click through. Let me leave you with a final thought. Respect your visitors' time. Just because you have a T3 connection doesn't mean that they do. Just because you think it's fun to wander through a site trying to figure out what it does doesn't mean that your visitors have the same yen to explore. They've come to your site to buy something or to get information. Don't waste their time and make it a puzzle. Make it easy for them to buy and give them the information quickly. Anything that gets in the way of those two objectives is wasteful and silly.
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