Results

In terms of your company’s presence on the Internet, your website is everything that your customers, your employees, and your support staff are able to see. Despite being a two-dimensional world, you can do a great deal more with your website than you can with your office, and you can do it faster, cheaper and with greater room for creativity.

Of course, the same rules of common sense and decorum apply to the Internet as much as anywhere else, even if sometimes that evidence is in short supply. Try to approach the design and functionality of your website from the perspective of those who will actually be using it, the golden rule being: Do unto others as they would find easiest done. Find ways to get feedback and act on the information you’ve been given to move in a more constructive direction. At the heart of user-centered design is the notion that users gravitate towards what suits them best. The more users you have, the more robust your business will be.

1.) Usability Basics

You want to make sure you have a simple, easy-to-use website…but likewise, simple should not be misunderstood as boring. There’s a happy medium to be struck where your surfers’ attention can be gained and maintained easily. To each user, a website should feel intuitive, as if it were designed expressly with that individual in mind.

2.) Organization

Think of a website like a crime syndicate: the better organized it is, the more successful it will be. The fewer loose ends your website has, the less you have to worry about. The more half-naked girls you put out there, the more hits on your site…okay, forget about that last one.

Rather, remember: every aspect of your website should have a place and a purpose.

3.) Simplicity

Simplicity means more than just functionality of design or what widget goes where on a page. It’s a sense of a streamlined form in your website, and it has to do with everything from click-through to readability (a feature that too many errors, for example, can significantly hamper). Simplicity is both what makes a site elegant and functional. Consider this saying from the Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (translation by Stephen Mitchell):

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

This is more than some inscrutable Eastern philosophy. When you fill a website with every clanging color and jangling array of options, there is no emptiness to use, to lead a user where he needs to be. A path is filled with emptiness, but it is exactly what is required to convey someone from point A to point B.

4.) Color

We are visual creatures and we like the shiny. It is, perhaps, how a website called “hampsterdance” once became ubiquitous. Even better, it’s the effective use of color that can make the difference between professional and deplorable.

5.) Content

Well written content is just as important as any other design element on the page. Keywords (the terms that are used to find information on search engines like Google) that are skillfully embedded into the text but do not overwhelm it will draw users to your site, and, once they are there, will be integrated seamlessly to the overall feel of the content. This is how to implement search engine optimization without sacrificing syntax or usability. Well written content will complement the design and will provide a warm welcome to the users who use your site.

A final tip? Seek professional help.

No, not a psychiatrist—although if the thought of building and maintaining a professional-looking website is giving you thoughts of the couch, it’s definitely time to consider handing the reins to a professional web design firm.

There you have it: add a splash of chartreuse and this article would have followed the rules of website design itself. How meta-meta functional!

Friday, October 19th, 2007 Both comments and pings are currently closed.

By Haley January Eckels