Concrete Forest

Its been a busy week.  We didn’t do the design side of this project either, but again worked with another firm to divide the project up. We did the entire HTML/CSS/PHP build however.

This is just phase 1 – there will likely be a phase2 with a lot more content.

http://www.sunfarmnetwork.com/

• Optimize your pages and images.
  • Smaller files = faster load = better experience = longer visits and repeats.

• Design for search.
  • Match title tags to content, to meta data and to the text content early on in your page.
  • Use alt tags on graphics.
  • Get in-bound links (not really a design issue).

• Think about your audience.
  • Why are they there and what do they want?
  • Do you have multiple audiences? If so segment your site to meet each major constituencies’ needs.

• K.I.S.S.
  • Keep your interface simple stupid.  It has to be easy to understand or you’ll lose them!
  • Avoid more than seven menu choices at any one time.  Again too many choices leads to confusion.
  • Don’t have too many things clamoring for attention on the same page.
  • On each page where is the major focus point?  If you have too many then maybe you are trying to do too much on the one page.
  • Meanwhile no more than three clicks to any particular content is the ideal you should be striving for.

• Sticky is good.
  • Find ways to get people to come back.
  • If they believe your site has value and they may find something new next time they just may come back.
  • Get visitors to register so you can remind them you exist later.
    • There has to be value to them, so what do they get for registering?
    • Signing up for email newsletters or ‘specials’ is one way.
    • Don’t force it! Visitors will leave if you make it hard to do anything without registering, or you’ll get bad data!
    • Don’t SPAM them or abuse any permission granted by too much email. Make sure your communications are permission based!

• Don’t confuse your visitors, or they’ll leave!
  • Bread crumbs are one way of helping (showing the path they followed with backtracking available).
  • Let them start over or back up – ideally without losing EVERYTHING.
  • Be consistent in your navigation – don’t move things to the top then to the left…..
  • Be mindful of ‘de facto’ standards in layout.
    • Home should be the first item.
    • Your logo should link to your home page.
    • If you have a contact us button it should usually be the last option.
    • If you have a search mechanism it should usually go top-right corner.  Don’t believe me? Put an email signup there and see what happens!
  • Don’t have too much motion on the page.
  • Avoid sound effects on a page load.
    • If your visitor specifically clicked on something knowing was going to make noise then that’s okay.
    • If there is sound then make it easy to turn down or off in the browser.  Don’t make them go scrambling for the volume on the speakers on computer controls.
    • Some folks are going on-line at work and don’t want the rest of the office to know they are on your site!

• Not all visitors have the same monitor.
  • Assume your audience uses different monitor settings.  If you adapt the site accordingly great.  Otherwise work within the 800 pixel width (and leave some space on the right for the browser scroll bar).

• Not all visitors use MS-Explorer.
  • More and more are using Firefox, and Apple’s market share has grown, so look for Safari more often too.
  • Some style attributes may not format the same from one browser to another.
  • Don’t rely on activex or some other browser specific components.
  • Don’t forget Opera and Chrome.
  • They don’t have huge audiences but hey you are already going to the effort so why not be thorough?
  • Make sure your site renders correctly on Windows PCs and Apple OS X machines too.
  • You should probably even be thinking about flavors of Linux like Ubuntu also (though I must confess I don’t yet).  This probably depends upon the degree of geekiness of your audience – yes it goes back to #3 ‘knowing your audience’.

• Ease up on the banner ads.
  • I call it the race car phenomena (you know what I mean).  It gets to the point where there is barely a spot on the car visible without an ad of some sort.  Don’t let your site become like that – its a huge turn off.
  • You may need revenue from ads, but use them judiciously and limit how many per page.
  • Avoid more than one moving element on a page at a time – if it has to be a banner then let it be the only one!

Got a different opinion?

Think I missed some rules?  I think I need one more to make ten.

Chime in and let me know!