The well-designed Web site (2)
In my last post on this topic, I led up, point by point, to my first unbreakable rule: be 100% clear about what your site is going to offer visitors.
This time, I will state the rule right at the start. Unbreakable rule 2. Make it super-easy for your visitors to get what they want.
This means three things.
- Put your stuff in obvious places. On the home page, or on pages with well-known and unambiguous names (like “Contact Us”); at the top of the page, or after a big arrow, or in a box by itself. Etc., etc. Put yourself in the visitor’s shoes, looking for what you know you have. Where will any visitor look first?
- Make it easy to find everything. Devise the perfect navigation scheme, provide a site map and—if your site is at all complex—a search box or an index page (or both).
- Make it easy to read. If you use small print because it looks good, size it in ems or percentages, never in pixels or points. This way, any visitor can pump it up to a size they find comfortable. (Unbreakable rule 2a. Never use fixed size fonts.) And make sure your text colour is really easy to read against your background colour. The W3C have clear standards for this—and here is a page where you can check your own colours online.