Ten Common-Sense Rules for Web Designers: A Manifesto
May 22, 2007 • (0) Comments
Okay, so “manifesto” may be a bit hyperbolic. Anyway, here are ten lessons I’ve discovered the hard way.
- The canvas is your friend. In choosing horizontal placement, be considerate of it without being constrained. You do not know how large a viewer’s window will be and dictating its size is impolite. Vertical placement should understand what belongs “above the fold”.
- Make pages that honor recognizable emotional forms. Employ the Golden Proportion as your guide. Typography should be eye-friendly. Choose kerning and line-lengths deliberately.
- Color palettes should amplify rather than confuse the site’s message.
- If you cannot summarize the site’s message in one succinct sentence, it is probably attempting to do too much. Create separate sites. If you cannot summarize a page’s message in one succinct sentence, create separate pages.
- If you are building a site consisting of dynamic pages served through templates, design the page layout that contains the fewest choices for readers first. Usually, this will be that most-common denominator, the single-item or “permalink’ template. This page MUST make sense within the overall site aesthetic. Only then should you consider pages that do more.
- Templates for weblog “archive” or aggregate pages serving more than one entry at a time should never contain the full text of an entry. Doing so wastes the opportunity to record visitors’ click choices and, therefore, to know what they found valuable. Learn to write “blurb” or excerpt copy that sells the full-text click-through.
- If a page’s purpose is to cause readers to take a specific action, simplify that page so that the action is obvious and inescapable. Give visual and spatial prominence to elements that complete the action.
- If a site’s purpose is to cause readers to take any of several actions, organize navigation and page precedence so that the preferred action is obvious and inescapable.
- Understand in advance why websites become orphans. Orphans are most often sites that require no action be taken by visitors. That’s because:
a) they don’t sell anything;
b) click trails offer little guidance for creating future content;
c) the publisher’s opportunity to educate, create community or to add other value via stickiness are wasted. - Design that obscures purpose or usability wastes bandwidth and should not be undertaken by professionals.