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Unless a site is quick and easy to use it will be a barrier rather than a gateway. Usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, suggests users spend on average less than 2 minutes on a website. The key to engaging visitors' must therefore be simplicity over complexity; the need is less not more - less clutter, less blurb and fewer barriers. Why clutter-free design 'When we're creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading our finely crafted text, figuring out how we've organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click... ...We're thinking 'great literature' (or at least 'product brochure'), while the user's reality is much closer to 'billboard going by at 60 miles an hour.' --Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think The Internet is clearly a different form of communication to more established media such as printed literature. However, it is only in recent years that its intrinsic differences have begun to make an impact on web design. I cannot count the number of times I've heard of clients asking their web designer to 'put our brochure online' - a brief that reflects a common lack of appreciation of the web as a powerful but very different medium. Ensuring that the design and layout of our web pages suit the medium they are used in will help to ensure a positive user experience. Let's look at a few practical ways of doing more with less to make things simpler for our visitors: 1) Make pages easy to scan It's a well recognised fact now amongst web professionals that people rarely read pages online - they scan, or 'speed read'. Therefore, if the information they need is not readily available they will move on - and quickly. Sensible use of headings, subheadings and bullet-points help bring a logical hierarchy to the page and allow visitors eyes to scan through the page efficiently to find the information they needallows visitors eyes to scan through efficiently to find the information they need. 2) Give me some [white] space Subtle and thoughtful use of space in page design helps guide a visitor's eyes to important information. It also helps to bring logical definition to different areas of a page, which lightens the load on our brains and allows us to focus on the task in hand. 3) Copy? Reduce it Visitors often won't have the time or inclination to read pages and pages of text in the hope of finding what they're after. We need to prune our web copy to suit the medium - get rid of paragraphs and sentences that don't add value. 4) Simplify site structure Make sure that the sections of the site are divided up logically and that the navigation is clear and logical. Reduce the number of steps it takes to complete tasks, especially when they lead to revenue generation - such as the checkout process on an e-commerce site. 5) Follow standards When it comes to labelling navigation links, it's a good idea to follow standards that have evolved with web development. For example, with contact details rather than giving it a navigation label, 'call for more information/our offices', the standard would be 'contacts' or 'contact us'.
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Some might suggest that these principles constrain creativity. However, I believe that the 'less is more' philosophy heightens the need for a more creative approach to communicating ideas and messages - communicating an idea in 10 words is a lot harder than using 100 words.
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More Articles:1. Be friendly to search engines The object of search engines is to give their visitors a list of web pages relevant to the search words, in the order of relevance to the search words. So what do they want from websites?Relevance to a search:The frequency of the search word on a web page is an indicator of its relevance.If a web page contains the word ten times on the page, it is ten times more relevant than a page which contains the word only once. The position of the search word: In the title tag. In the HTML coding, the titl… 2. Simplicity is the heart of effective web design Keep it simple. Will ya? Have you ever wondered over the striking commonalities among some of the tremendously functional sites of our time? Just spare some thoughts on the features of sites like Cisco, Marshall , Dell, Amazon, etc., and the answer would not elude you. Yeah. You have got it. Plain and simple. Friendly and functional. No cosmetics. No facelifts. No fuss. Simplicity matters in web design as it does in other spheres of life. Web design is not a medium to show off your technical … 3. Web Source Web Design Tips - Open a Web Page in a New Window When you link to outside web pages, you may not want tocompletely lose your visitor. By creating a link to otherweb sites that opens in a new window, your web page willremain open as well.To open a web page in a new window, add the followingcode to your link.Your Link Tutorials - Photoshop,Dreamweaver,Vb.Net. - Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Excel, Flash Mx, Vb.Net, Spyware + Windows Xp Video Tutorials from $14.95 to $49 - Affiliates earn 50%Hot* Brand New: AdwareAlert. - Our Highet Converting/Paying D… 4. Graphics Optimization Graphics images on the internet come in three major formats: GIF, JPEG andPNG (and PNG's close relation MNG). Each of these formats has it'sassociated advantages and disadvantages. It is important that you understandall three formats to make the correct decision as to which to use under whatcircumstances.One of the major factors to consider when choosing or using a graphicsformat is the size of the resultant image file. In addition, you will needto understand how to optimize images in each forma… |
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