| As a web designer, you should design your websites | | | | visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your |
| to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the | | | | site. Moreover, they just add to the visitor's burden |
| best impression and most important of all a | | | | when viewing your site -- users on dial up |
| welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had | | | | connections will have to wait longer just to view your |
| the greatest product in the whole world -- if your | | | | site as it is meant to be viewed. |
| website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even | | | | 2) Extra large/small text size |
| one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your | | | | As I said, there is more to web design than purely |
| website by the lousy design. | | | | graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! |
| When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not only | | | | You should design the text on your site to be legible |
| talking about a good graphical design. A professional | | | | and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it |
| web design will be able to point out that there are | | | | without straining their eyes. No matter how good the |
| many components which contribute to a good | | | | content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's |
| website design -- accessibility design, interface or | | | | illegible you won't be selling anything! |
| layout design, user experience design and of course | | | | 3) Popup windows |
| the most straightforward, which is graphic design. | | | | Popup windows are so blatantly used to display |
| Hence, I have highlighted some features of the | | | | advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup |
| worst web designs I've come across. Hopefully, you | | | | windows are not worth my attention so I just close |
| will be able to compare that against your own site as | | | | them on instinct every time each one manages to |
| a checklist and if anything on your site fits the | | | | pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one |
| criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious | | | | like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my |
| action! | | | | screen. Imagine if you had a very important message |
| 1) Background music | | | | to convey and you put it in a popup window that |
| Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, | | | | gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's |
| a CD or anything related to music, I would really | | | | screen. Your website loses its function immediately! |
| advise you to stay away from putting looping | | | | In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a |
| background music onto your site. It might sound | | | | webmaster your job is to make sure your website |
| pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big | | | | does what it's meant to do effectively. Don't let |
| site with hundreds of pages and every time a visitor | | | | some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning |
| browses to another page on your site, the | | | | optimally! |
| background music starts playing again. If I were your | | | | |