Rules of the Web

Just like anything else that requires direction & structure, the internet also requires rules & regulations. These rules and regulations are to ensure that all users have a positive, stress free experience.

Sometimes you will come across a website that has not complied with the rules of web design. You will spot these sites straight away with there bad designs, confusing navigations, conflictive nature and all the other inconsistencies like font sizes, colours etc. To ensure that you don't unknowingly create a bad site follow my steps below and prevent any problems from arising.

Audience

Make sure you know who your target audience is before you start anything. Once you know your target audience you can then make the hard decisions of your designs.

i.e. "Should I use flash, if so how much?" well if we are talking of a audience of OAPs then no you wouldn't or if it is absolutely necessary you would keep it to the very minimum.

Design

Design also ties into the knowing your audience point, as you will design your website around your target audience. If your website is a social site for teens to young adults you will be in most cases quite graphical, strong emphasis on design and creative flair.

Another part of design that is sometimes over looked by beginners is the styling of paragraphs, fonts etc. These are quite small aspects of your website, but they can have a huge impact on the look of your site.

Simplicity

When it comes to design you will soon come to realise that the less on the screen the cleaner it looks. One thing you should remember is if your visitors are having trouble using your site there is a problem somewhere. Just because you feel it is easy to navigate and operate doesn't mean it actually is, listen to your audience and make the changes they need. A good way to get around this before it actually becomes a problem is to offer a questionnaire for people to complete, this will effectively pick out any issues for you asap.

Colours

This should be common sense but you would be surprised how often you'll see a site with a background colour that over powers the font colour, effectively making your visitors eyes hurt and sucking their will to live. Well its not that bad but it does get extremely annoying. A great way to overcome this problem is to not take chances, if your chosen colours are too close reassess and choose a different colour that will defiantly not cause you any problems. You need to remember that colours won't always display exactly the same on every computer, so if it borderline readable on your computer someone else could be having extreme problems seeing difference.

Tables

With ever site you make you should be aiming to get it up to standards. Something you should be doing with every website if lose the tables. Tables are not a good tool for layout, they have been considered bad practice for the past 5+ years. Replace your tables with div tags and ensure your site is up to standards. The only situation where a table is OK is for its actual purpose which is for holding data. I.e. a science experiment findings tables to display the results.

So by following those 5 points you can give your website a fighting chance at succeeding.

Visit www.w3c.org for all the latest web standards info and take advantage of their validators to check your website for errors.