Best Web Site Design Tips & Tricks

Test Your Links

Testing your links is such an obvious yet such a tedious thing it often gets ignored. But, do make sure your links work and that they stay working, especially if the links are to external sources. Also don’t always rely on a link checker to do the work, a link checker will not tell you if a link has been switch to a non-reputable page! Check the links yourself now and again.

• Rule: Test Your Links.

Minimise Clicking (Minimise Breadcrumb Trail)

Don’t you just love it when looking for objects in applications such as Microsoft Office. Click the menu tab, then the sub-menu, followed by another sub-menu, followed by a dialog box, followed by a drop-down menu, followed by a dialog box, followed by a list box… you get the idea.

If you plan your site structure carefully you should be able to minimize the menu depth you visitors have to negotiate in order to find items of interest. Try to have a maximum click depth of three (preferably one).

• Rule: Put As Few Click As Possible Between Your Data And Your Visitor.

Menus And Navigation

Menus allow your visitors to quickly navigate your site in a structured manner, so place a menu on every page. If you don’t want a menu on a particular page then place a clearly accessable navigation method on the page such as a large button for example.

The best place for menus is at the top and/or left side of a page. Sometimes, for very long pages, it helps to have a menu at the bottom of the page as well.

• Rule: Use Clear Navigation Methods.

Provide Breadcrumbs

Always, on every page, provide a way for visitors to return to the home page. Include a “Home Page” link on the menu (if you have one) and a clickable logo on the top of every page which will return the visitor to your home page.

Why? Visitors do get lost and the simplest solution for them is to start at the beginning again. Also those users who arrived from a search engine link will probably arrive at some page in the “middle” of your site. Give them a way to get home.

• Rule: Provide A “Home Page” Link On Every Page.

Limit Page Length

How long should a page be? A difficult question, but given that most visitors don’t like having to scroll down your pages, the answer is, a page should be as short as possible.

So why is this page so long? Well sometimes when an article is very long, you have a choice of either placing the whole article on one page or splitting the article into multiple pages and increasing clicks. It’s just a choice you have to make. For very long articles, you may have to use both techniques.

• Rule: Minimise Screen Scrolling.

Frames Are For Pictures

Don’t be tempted to use frames on your site they are not search engine friendly and with the advent of CSS quite unnecessary. Frames focus on layout rather than on information structure.

The fundamental problem with the design of frames is that framesets create states in the browser that are not addressable. Once any of the frames within a frameset changes from its default content, there is no longer a way to address the current state of the frameset.

Framed pages are difficult to bookmark and impossible to link or index. Basic browser functions such as, printing, browsing forwards or backwards in the history behave differently with framesets and browsers cannot identify which frame should have focus.

• Rule: Don’t Use Frames.

Provide A Custom 404 Page

The 404 or Not Found error message is an HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested. This error is usually the result of an incorrect URL (web address) or a page move or page deletion.

Webservers can typically be configured to display a customised error page, including a more natural description, the parent site’s branding or sometimes a search form.

If you need more information you can read my article, “How To Create A 404 Page”.

• Rule: Provide A Custom 404 Page.