Web Site Design

from the book Don’t Make Me Think

What is the purpose of your index, home, landing, page? Also, people won’t use your Website if they can’t find their way around it.

"As far as humanly possible, when I look at a Web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory. I should be able to 'get it' – what it is and how to use it – without expending any effort thinking about it."

The second chapter dramatizes the difference between what we design for, and the reality of how users use the Web. In particular:
* People don’t read, they scan
* Users don’t make the best choice, they select the first "good enough" solution
* Visitors don’t figure out how things work, they "muddle" through

http://www.ratz.com/featuresgood.html
http://www.ratz.com/featuresbad.html

http://ls.berkeley.edu/lscr/advice/web/design

Many people may come to your web site from a search engine and will not land directly on your welcome, home, page. If they click the "Back" button they will return to the search engine and not to you! By having a title, either image or text, that is a link, in the top left corner, where they expect it, you'll make your site easier to get around and you'll keep your visitors on your site longer.

People expect there to be a series of text links at the bottom of every web page on your web site. One of the first links should be a "home" link, which serves the same function as the image or link at the top of the web page. Please note that this is text and not images. People expect it to be text, and this also helps search engines crawl through your web site with ease.

1. A Good Website is Compelling: It Provides Value to Your Audience that draws them to your site again and again.
2. A Good Website Meets Clearly Identified Goals
3. A Good Website is Easy to Navigate
4. Visual Attractiveness of a Site: although visual attractiveness is an important element, compelling content, clearly defined goals and easy navigation are equally important.
Many people make the mistake of throwing music, little animations or scrolling text on there site without any real reason. This does not make a good looking site. All this does is make your site look like a Neon Billboard. Please, Don't Do This !
Make your design clean and simple. Use images and design as a vehicle to achieve the goals you set out for your website.

SPEED

Where you have the authority, and on your own pc, you may find that "the best performance can be seen on a full dedicated server running Lighttpd (It's MUCH faster than Apache)" also, for tips on optimizing the loading speed of your web site pages, visit www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/