50 Surefire Web Design Tips
Article By Mario Sanchez ©Copyright 2003
Tips On Writing For The Web
26. Write in layman's terms so that everybody can understand your content,
unless you're running a technical site for technical people.
27. Reading from a screen is painful: use 50% less words than you would
use on print.
28. If a page is too long, break it into several pages and link to
them.
29. Don't use font sizes smaller than 10pt. for the body of your page.
Specify your fonts in percentage terms instead of pixels to let users
set their own size preferences using their browser's text view options.
30. Use a spell checker. Spelling mistakes are embarrassing and hurt
credibility.
Tips to Know Your Customers
31. Ask for feedback: include a feedback form in your Contact Us page.
32. Publish an ezine and include a subscription form in your homepage.
Give your customers valuable information and encourage them to contact
you.
33. Include polls and other tools to gather market intelligence.
Tips on Linking
34. Make your links descriptive. They should indicate what the user
will be linking to, as opposed to just saying "click
here".
35. Don't underline anything that is not a link.
36. Underline your links and use a consistent color for them across
your site (preferably blue).
37. Use a different color for visited links, so that your visitors
know where they've been (preferably purple or a more subdued tone of
the unvisited links color).
38. When linking to a non-HTML file, such as Excel, Word or Acrobat,
make it evident, by including a small icon next
to the link.
39. Don't link to "under construction" pages.
40. Make sure that your links work and that you don't have broken links.
There are free online tools that can help you with this.
41. If you use graphic links, don't forget to use the ALT attribute.
The ALT attribute should describe what you are linking to.
Tips On How To Use Graphics
42. Optimize your graphics. Use only .gif and .jpg formats. Make your
image files as small as possible while maintaining acceptable quality.
Use a free online graphics optimization tool.
43. Use thumbnails (miniature versions of a picture) and make them
clickable to the actual size picture.
44. Avoid graphics that look like ads. People ignore them.
45. Use the ALT attribute on pictures, even if the image is not a link.
It helps users with disabilities and people who have turned off graphics.
Tips To Optimize Your Site For The Search Engines
46. Create short, descriptive page titles, to entice search engine
users to click on your links.
47. Create a site map containing all your pages, and link to it directly
from your homepage. Search engine robots will follow the link to your
site map and will most likely add all your pages to their index.
48. Decide what the two or three main keywords are for each page (the
words you believe search engine users will type to find
your page) and repeat them often in your page title, description meta
tag and page body.
49. Create a Links page and call it Resources. In it, place links to
those sites that have agreed to place a reciprocal link to your page.
The more inbound links you have from quality sites with a topic related
to your site, the better your site will rank with the search engines.
50. Use more text than graphics, and minimize the use of Flash and
JavaScript. Search engines heavily favor text and will crawl and index
your site faster.
For more details on these tips, or for more tips, visit
http://www.theinternetdigest.net .
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Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest
( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a collection of web design
and Internet marketing tips and resources to help you design a
better website and market it more effectively.
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Copyright © 2003 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.
