Given the credit crunch and the competition, website designers are fighting for new work. So it’s always nice when you get some, and for such deserving clients.
I have just finished a Web site for a medical clinic in Albir, near Benidorm on the Costa Blanca. You can now inspect this medical Web site yourself.
You can also check out my design notes for it if you browse my website portfolio, on my personal Web site.
You say ‘tomato,’ I say ‘Web site.’ Does it matter how we write it?
In the long run, no. But then, as Keynes said, “In the long run we are all dead.” In the meantime, it helps to follow a couple of simple rules. And on a Web site, it’s always important to be consistent.
In the first place, it should always be the Internet, with a capital I, and the Web, with a capital W. These are the names of specific things, like the Alamo—which always has a capital A. Or like the Monument, if you’re referring to that particular building in London, and not any old monument.
The World-Wide Web is not any old web—not a spider’s web, nor the tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. So it should always be the Web.
As far as Web site and website go, it probably only matters to be consistent. What I do is use Web site as a noun, when I’m referring to a site itself, and website as an adjective.
If you have a better idea, please let me know! If I like it I might even offer a prize—such as a period of free hosting on Web Costa Blanca…
As the title suggests, this is the seventh in a series of rules for website design, which began in June of last year with Rule 1. In that post, and in the second post in the series, I explain what I mean by a rule, so I won’t repeat the explanation here.
The rules are supposed to be in some sort of logical order, and focus on visual design for the Web—assuming that the all-important work of analysis has already been completed. So the last rules were about choosing and using colours, throughout a Web site. Time to look at individual website pages at the moment of creation. Here then is rule 7.
7. One Web page, one focus
In other words, decide what is the most important feature of the page you are working on—and make sure it looks the most important. Make it stand out. Make it the focus of attention.
There are lots of ways to do this. Variations in size work: make it the biggest element on the page. Or it can be the best-placed element, or the most strikingly coloured—or it can catch attention by being intriguing. Attention-grabbing contrast will often work: a reverse block of colour, an oversize font, a juxtaposition of colours…
On an ideal Web page, there is something a visitor can take in in the first second of the page loading. This should be the most important thing on the page. Similarly, if a visitor stays after the first second—they may not—she or he should be able to see what the page has to offer without reading any text (except maybe a header).
It follows from this that there shouldn’t be two or more elements competing for attention. There should be only one ‘top dog.’ This may mean taking risks: so take them. As design guru Jim Krause says, “You must be decisive.” As (designer) Robin Williams says, “Don’t be a wimp!”
I have just recreated the ‘Web Solutions’ section of my personal Web site, which has my personal portfolio and tips on website design. It took much, much longer than I thought it would, but I had to do it to maintain some sort of credibility in 2009, since it was so out of date. The old section could have been embarrassing my existing clients—and would certainly have put off future clients.
Have a look for yourself!
Is there a phrase on one of your Web pages that you’d really like to change? Do you want to update a particular item of information? Do you want to make the changes yourself, right now?
In my sixth article on cPanel for beginners, I show you how to edit your own Web pages—online. (For a full list of these tutorials, look at the Articles and Tutorials contents page on the main Web Costa Blanca site.)
People usually use an FTP program to upload new or amended files to their Web site. Do you want a simpler way? Look no further than your cPanel.
In my fifth article on cPanel for beginners, I show you how to upload files—Web pages, images and scripts—to your own server. (For a full list of these tutorials, look at the Articles and Tutorials contents page on the main Web Costa Blanca site.)
One of the main reasons why I started this blog is that I was appalled by the standard of Web site design in expatriate Spain.
Of course, most of them were property sites and rental sites, cashing in on a temporary boom. If visitors were looking for something definite, they could cope with the most amateurish of sites.
The property boom is over, especially for British expatriates, with the pound approaching parity with the euro. We really need to move on from sites built from templates, and sites built by teenagers in love with Flash.
So why do we have sites as fundamentally dreadful as the site for the “Iceland” shops in expatriate Spain?
The shop is fine
I shop frequently at my local “Iceland”, in Benissa. It is a fine shop, with produce shipped in every day from Britain. It has a fantastic English butcher, a serious range of frozen ready meals, and bottled real ale, like Hobgoblin and Bishops Finger. So I have nothing whatsoever against the company.
The site is shameful
It’s just their Web site which is so awful. If you have ever read a post in this blog, you will know that Web site design begins with thinking about visitors. It is an extension of researched marketing. It is not about the scenery.
Before they take it down, have a look at their page which tells you where their shops are.
What does any visitor want from such a page, at a bare minimum? Opening hours would be good. I can’t find them anywhere on the site. Next, a visitor will want to know where their nearest shop is, and how to get to it. This should be the page to do it. Just take a despairing look.
At the top it says, Below you will find details on Overseas Imports stores located in Tenerife. We are currently expanding our business to mainland Spain, so expect more addresses to be added here shortly. Since there are half a dozen shops in mainland Spain on the page, you would have expected the company (someone paid them to do the design) at least to rewrite this sentence.
The real crime, however, is their map. This is designer-centred design so bad it has to be called ‘teenage design.’ It aims to impress rather than inform—and it doesn’t inform at all. The tiny maps in the circles are of no use. Who could drive anywhere using them? In the case of the Benissa shop, they have a bit of a map which shows an area which is half an hour’s drive from the shop—and the arrow is pointing to a crazy spot on the main map.
If you look at the other pages, you will see graphics-free text pages with lines stretching across the page. And then this page, which uses huge static graphics. Google maps, with a simple enough API for real Web site designers, are free. I use them on almost all my expatriate Spain sites. I just can’t work out where the Web site design company responsible for the “Iceland” site is coming from.
In expatriate Spain, we are having a hard enough time. We deserve better from our Web site designers.
What are the key features of designer-centred design?
It’s like finding yourself with a really stylish teacup—but the tea leaks out of the bottom of the cup. Or coming upon a breathtakingly elegant bridge—but it sways dangerously when you try to walk across it. You get the idea.
What are the alternatives to designer-centred design?
Clients are always asking us to incorporate features which we know are not in their best interests. As far as we can, we should calmly and professionally argue them out of such requests. Or they may ask us to change something which we know will work for them as it is. Ditto.
However, if we can’t persuade them, their site ends up being an example of client-centred design. This is better than designer-centred design, but only just.
The holy grail is visitor-centred design. Everything on such a site makes a visitor’s journey through it easier and more satisfying. And everything is on the site because we have spent a fair bit of time working out who its likely visitors and wanted visitors will be, and what they will want from the site. The client gets a site which works, and the designer gets a site to be proud of.
I have identified the obvious questions we need to ask ourselves again and again in this blog. Including my last post.
There I also said that I had one glaring example of designer-centred website design in expatriate Spain to present to you. It will be named and shamed in my next post.
There are people who think that designing Web sites comes naturally to people who are computer-savvy. Other people think a good design is something visually appealing that they can see on a computer screen.
Bad luck. That isn’t what Web site design is at all.
Web site design is a form of information design, or communication design. On this blog, I’ve recently been developing a set of rules for good visual design. But visual design is only 10% of the iceberg. Real Web site design is the other 90%—the analysis and the research that precede and inform visual design.
What is the real purpose of this site? What are the things it has to offer people, because otherwise it might as well not exist? Who precisely is going to be visiting this site? Who precisely do we want to visit this site? What can we offer them when they get here? How can we make sure they get what they want—and in the way they want it? These questions have to be answered before a designer even sketches a page.
People don’t want to spend time on Web sites. They certainly don’t come for the scenery. They want to find out answers to their questions, buy a product, arrange for a service—and then get on with their lives.
Yes, visual design is important. But what that means is communicating efficiently with a specific set of users. So it can’t start until the site concept has been unambiguously defined. It has to come after overall site design, or site structuring. It has to come after navigation design. And in itself, it has to allow users to scan fast, get what they want, and leave. A page which is visually appealing in its own right may be an absolute disaster as visual communication of a message.
At its worst, the sort of design of which your uncle says, “Oh, that’s really good,” is designer-centred design, ‘Look, Ma, no hands!’ stuff. I have one glaring local example in mind, but before I spring it on you, I’ll have a bit more to say about designer-centred design in my next post.
Are you being negative if you want personal copies of all the files on your Web site? I don’t think so.
In my fourth article on cPanel for beginners, I show you how to back up every precious file on your site—including your databases. (For a full list of these tutorials, look at the Articles and Tutorials contents page on the main Web Costa Blanca site.)