Web Site Design Guidelines
The design of a Web site should be consistent with its objectives.
If you're trying to sell a product or service, it should attract the customers you want, keep them coming back, present all the information they need to make a buying decision, convince them to buy, and make it easy for them to order and pay. The site should make money for you. Similar truths apply if you're providing information, advocating a cause, or signing up members. This is our "Prime Directive." All further design rules follow from and support it.
Content is the single most essential factor in the success of a site.
High-quality, frequently-changing content is what causes customers to keep coming back to your site. It's what gets your site listed on the most important search engines. Lodging and hospitality sites should include visuals. 73% of those who stay in hotels start their stay by researching accommodations online. 69% of those say visuals of the accommodation are "very important" in making a decision.
A site should contain only those design elements that are necessary to the achieving its objectives.
We believe that the use of technology for technology's sake (because it's there!) generally hinders the achievement of Rule Number 1. We deplore the gratuitous use of any technology which does not directly support the objectives of the site.
Knowing the target audience is essential to a successful site design.
The tone of the content and the technology used to present it must be appropriate for the people it is supposed to influence. There's a parallel here with the design of retail stores. Ralph Lauren Polo and The Gap both sell men's, women's and children's clothing, but their store designs are entirely different. This is because the customers they're trying to attract are different. Ralph Lauren is aiming at a smaller, more upscale market seeking exclusive styles and the highest quality, while the Gap targets a broader customer base looking for current styles at prices that represent good value. If you're targeting software developers using state-of-the-art equipment, a higher level of technology and 16-million-color graphics may be appropriate. But a similar site could be virtually unusable by school librarians using 486 PCs with 256-color monitors.
Pages, especially the home or entry page, must load rapidly.
About two-thirds of Web-surfers are using dialup connections. On a dialup connection, an overly "artistic" page 500K in size can take minutes to load. One recent study suggests that, on average, first-time visitors to a site make a stay-or-go decision within the first eight seconds of the page beginning to load. This has enormous implications for the size of page files, and particularly graphics files. The designer must use every trick in the book to minimize file size while maintaining quality.
All the design elements of the site must be consistent with the product being presented.
The typefaces, color scheme, background and graphics on a museum site should be different from those on a site selling stereo equipment, just as the design of the Smithsonian is different from that of a Circuit City store.
Text must be persuasive, free from errors and written in a style that fits the product and the audience.
Your Web site is an advertising vehicle like any other. Expert copy-writing and editing are essential parts of the design process. Errors of any kind are unprofessional. Visitors will perceive any quality problems on your web site as indicative of the quality of your product or service and the people behind it.
Visitors must know where they are on your site at all times and be able to find easily whatever they're looking for.
Consistent, intuitive navigation tools are needed to do this. For a site of any size, an internal keyword search engine should be included.
It must be easy for visitors to take whatever action you want them to take.
Whether the aim is to get visitors to sign up for a membership, subscribe to a newsletter, download a piece of software, or place a credit-card order for a product, every opportunity should be provided for them to do this.
Exiting your site should be a win/win proposition for you and the visitor.
Every visitor leaves sooner or later. But you need to maximize the probability of the visitor returning, and arrangements should be made for the visitor to leave happy: a little going-away gift or a choice of interesting links to sites that complement yours.
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