Suggest 3 Tips for Good Web Design

[rtow]

Suggest 3 tips that constitute good web design (from layout to content etc)from your own hard-won experience. Should guide newbies and help them avoid repeating the same mistakes. Oh, and try not to repeat someone elses.

Here are mine...

1. Blankspace is your friend and canvas. Don't cramp you territory!

2. Avoid using busy backgrounds. You want the visitor to notice your content, not your reed background.

3. If you want people to subscribe to a newsletter of some sort, give them a sample. Let them know what yout publication is all about.

[mck9235]

Okay, heres my two cents:
1. To much takes away from the site, you can never be to simple
2. Not everyone has a T1 connection...
3. Messy code is quite annoying to deal with in the long run.

[Dan]

MCK, wouldn't that be your three cents; just kidding :)

1) Try to keep your images as small as possible
2) Don't add to many things to your site such as polls, shoutboxes, guestbooks, etc., they take away from the actual site. It's ok to have a couple, but once you get a lot, it just overcrowds.
3) Don't get too techy, people won't be able to find the navigation through all your flash and high quality graphics

It's really hard not to repeat others because it's just the simple things that help out a lot.

[starmena3]

Ok let me try:
1) Try to keep it to a minimum of 3 colors if possible.
2) Learn as much as possible
3) Give as much info on the main page describing your site.(also good if you have ads on your site)

------
OFFTOPIC: ok why does everyone keep using the word Just my two cents?

[EnderX]

Ok let me try:
OFFTOPIC: ok why does everyone keep using the word Just my two cents?
That's actually a phrase, not a word :p

1) Take 1 week for design and then release your work on the public to get reactions. If you spend too much time working on a site, it will get clustered due to all the thoughts in your head.
2) KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. A lot of fancy websites look awsome, but provide no real functionality.
3) Already been said, but yes: keep graphics small. You can cut an image's size in half and it still looks decent. Think of those poor souls still on 56k (or even 28.8 :o )

[geek]

1) Do what whoever youre doing the site for wants, whether its whats good or not. (suggest doing it the "correct" way, but if they want it done a certain way, and a certain way only, do it. It's not your problem after that :P)

2) Ask others what they think, and be open to what they say. Don't be offended by constructive criticism. (This goes for every part of life, not just designing)

3) If you know how to do something you want, but it doesn't validate correctly - DO IT ANYWAY. Other than geeks like us who look at that, nobody will notice and/or care.

[galbus]

1) Test your pages using more than just one browser (especially if you are testing with Internet Explorer). Things can look very different.

2) Keep your text areas narrow. It is harder to read wider text areas on a screen than it is in print.

3) Learn and use CSS for text formatting. It is much easier to change one CSS class than a whole load of <FONT> tags throughout a site.

[Sage Tech]

1) Design your site to fit the needs of your visitors

2) You are not normally a typical visitor

3) Visitors don't care about PHP, CSS, HTML, SQL, SEO, etc they came to your site for a reason, make sure your site fulfills that reason

[EnderX]

This isn't really a hint.. but I just want to point something out:

If you are into PHP and coding, be prepared for a lonely world when dealing with clients. They don't care how many lines of code you wrote. They don't care how it works. They don't care how much time you spent on it.. well.. maybe they do when it comes to cost. But they do not care about the wood work. They just care if it works. I have come to realize this. Try sharing your latest accomplishment of a program you wrote with a loved one and have them look at you like you are insane.

I guess if I have a tip, it's to find a good community or at least a friend (like I have with geek :) ) that at least understands what you are talking about. If not, be prepared for a very lonely career.

[undacuvabruva]

Nice tips guys.
Here's some of mine

1.
Keep navigation easy. Make it so users can find what they want within 3 clicks from any page in your entire site (forums not included)
2.
If people don't know what your site is about they won't care. It should take no more that 5 minutes for a new user to figure out what your site is about. They shouldn't have to make any clicks (besides the one to get to your homepage) and shouldn't have to read more than one paragraph.
3.
Think about your future BEFORE coding your site. You will ALWAYS want to modify your site, it's human nature (i think =P ). So make it easy on yourself. A big mistake i made on my first few sites was i made it hard to change. It has to be easy to change. Use CSS, PHP whatever you have to. Also make it easy to find what you want when looking in your code, This will help curious web geeks and yourself when you're trying to change whatever it is you want to change
=P
can i do more than 3?
4.
Give your members what they want. You WILL lose members if they don't find what they need. And find it easy. Sometimes, when I see something, then i leave that site, then i want it again, but i can't find what i saw before. It really makes me mad.
there ya go,
Enjoi

[johnny_castle]

good stuff...
personally i'm all about simplicity. there is something very pleasing about a clean, well thought-out site; no clutter, sharp looking and readable. The web is about sharing information in a creative way, so don't cram a librarie's worth of info in to one page.

As we know, you can spend piles of time creating a site, so better to spend that time thinking about style and simple presentation rather than chasing down and coding all these wild fancy gimmicks and distracting nonsense.

three tips?
1. clean and striking. find a striking "centrepiece" and build a site around that.
2. test with all the browsers you can get your hands on, and test on other computers as well (different firewall settings, etc)
3. always put your email on there someplace so people can let you know if something is wrong.

cheers,
nils.

[Elriowiel]

ok here's mine:

1) Though it's been said... keep your graphic sizes small. avoid using png's... slice em up if you have to.

2) avoid too much animated, blinking and neon stuff... they may look cool individually, but when they're all together... that's a different story.

3) when it looks good to you, then it should be ok... the only way to get better is to practice, practice, practice.

[makeinu]

1. Test in every browser you can get your grubby little paws on. If you can't get to them all, find someone to help you.

2. Standards are your friend. Validate, validate, validate.

3. Use as little JavaScript as you possibly can get away with. It rarely does anything positive for you.

And a freebie, keep ads to a minimum, and avoid pop-ups and pop-unders like the plague they are.

[flames]

1. just keep everything simple, not too flashy-look at msn and yahoo, their layout is not so "shiny" but informative. try to do that
2. make sure none of your pics' sources are wrong, because if you put around more than 20 pics in one page, you might make some errors on the pic link. which makes the image fails to load with a big X (seems ugly to me)
3.if you want your site to be popular/active, just submit your site to google and other large search engines

[lsyliu]

Looks like most of the tips are covered!

I've created some website for companies before and websites for personal use and i've found that:

1) Easy to use

provide an easy navigation that works so your visitors don't get lost exploring your website or end up at dead ends. There's nothing more frustrating than not being able to find the info you want. One psychic website i did a few years ago was so complex a lot of visitors complained - so we did away with all the images, colors etc and the look was very minimal and clean but definately visitor friendly.
I'm also a fan of simple websites that aren't bogged down with too many blocks or columns.


2) Easy to find

Its all great having an all singing all dancing website, but not if no one can find it. One of my earliest mistakes was not designing websites that were search engine friendly - i tend to get carried away with all the creativity and lose the rest. So it's important i think to remember a few simple tweaks - like including keywords in the atual content, alt tags and title as well as in the meta tags when creating your site. There a lots of changes you can make to a website to make it easier to find, as well as website promotion, link exchange and advertising.


3) Easy to update

My boss's sister works for Virgin in their website marketing dept. Apparently according a research they did on their customers and visitors, a website that is constantly evolving and updated regularly is a major reason for returning traffic to any website. I made the mistake once as someone mentioned b4 :) of making my website hard to update. And now everytime i have to update the companies portfolio of projects i feel like screaming. I have to reproduce the entire set of graphical links on the index page everytime. well, serves me right :) But i won't make that mistake ever again, lol.

~ Lisa ~

[my_reflection]

Here's my tips:
1) Never put too many graphics on one pg becuz it takes long to read
2) Don't get too much tagboards, etc
3) Please don't take other people's graphics
4) Be happy with your site, make it how you want it

[Auto]

Some stuff I do that wasn't mentioned.
1. draw the website first... I draw my sites before I code them.
2. cut images up and use css to make the images span longer distances so to cut down on file sizes.
.mid {
background-image: url('../images/mid.gif');
background-repeat: repeat-y;
}
3. If an image is a link that doesn't appear to be a link at first sight then it's a good idea to add a text link at the bottom of the page denoting the linked page.

[KyanVrezpor]

1. Quick to load - make sure that you don't have too much multimedia and images. Alternatively, you can provide a HI and LO version for people with different connections.

2. Simplicity - try to keep to basic HTML and CSS as much as you can. Avoid mixing too many client-side coding languages, and don't make them necessary for any part of your site.

3. Standards - make sure you keep up to date with the latest HTML/XHTML standards, and don't use the tags that are about to become obsolete.