23 Web Design Rules to Follow
1. Clean and simple design is best
2. Clean and simple does NOT have to equal boring
3. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with your navigation
4. Avoid using splash pages
5. Limit your use of Flash
6. Eliminate distractions that pull visitors away from the main message
7. White space is your friend
8. Focus on improving website’s loading time
9. Use images to break up long passages of text
10. Use images to add to the message, not just for placeholders
11. Test your website in different browsers to ensure consistent appearance
12. Test your website on different monitors and resolutions as well
13. Use easy-to-read fonts
14. Ensure text color doesn’t clash with background
15. Black text on white background is still the standard for readability
16. Optimize your ALT tags
17. Don’t have auto-play sounds or video
18. Web layout and design should be consistent throughout the entire site
19. Make certain the website is easy to scan
20. Don’t abandon proven design principles for the sake of being “creative”
21. Check every piece of your website for errors before publishing
22. Never stop learning about web usability
23. Follow the rules of SEO
Which web design rules would you add to this list? Share your thoughts in the replies.
Check out other posts in the “23 Rules” series:
23 Copywriting Rules to Live By
December 21st, 2009 at 10:10 am
I agree with each and everyone of those rules. I would also add, don’t hide information, easter egg hunts are fun for children NOT for web users. If it takes someone more than a minute to locate the information they were looking for, you will lose them.
December 21st, 2009 at 6:32 pm
I agree with most of the points listed above… Optimizing tags and other SEO practices are extremely important to increase the relevancy of the site; doing so while you design it can make this process a little more simple. To create search engine friendly tags for your site, the first step is to research keyword ranking in Google Analytics to pinpoint which words you’re site is currently ranking well for. To build your rank from here, you’ll want to select words that are relevant in terms of search traffic but not tremendously generic and popular, to begin with. I work for a Boston Web Design firm and we also specialize in SEO services. From here, the process is primarily about hard work in terms of continual maintenance and knowledge and strategy about how to build your online presence.
January 8th, 2010 at 6:31 am
Well commended. I’m a application designer myself.