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Speed, Speed, Speed. Speed kills as they say
and the number one pet peeve of mine is web sites that load
slowly. The faster the pages load the longer the visitors will
stay at your site. |
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Have the menu bar in exactly the same place
on every page so people know where to click. Having a website
that is easy to navigate will keep your visitors at your website
longer. |
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Keep it short, clear, simple and to the
point. It is better to have 100 web pages then to have 1 web
page that has way too much information. |
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Always include a 'Home
Page' button on every page
so people can go back to the start with just one click. |
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Always have a page header so people know
exactly which page they are on at that moment. |
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Preferably, use one font type for the text on
your entire website. It's OK to use a different one in headers,
menus or animations, but it is preferable to not use various
ones throughout the running text. Verdana or Arial (sans-serif
fonts) are good fonts to use as they are easy to read on a
monitor. |
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Prioritize: put the most important bits of
information towards the top of the page, and make important
information throughout your page stand out from the rest. Use
bold fonts and colored fonts to emphasize the words you don't
want people to miss. But don't overdo it; there can only be so
much boldness and colored text on one page before it starts to
look messy. |
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Don't use graphics, pictures or animations
that are huge in file size. Web browsers are impatient; they
usually don't wait for graphics to load if it takes longer than
a couple of seconds. So keep it small. |
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Make your pages easy to read and browse. |
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Don't make text blocks too long and use
bullet points and subheadings to make it easier and quicker to
scan the page for relevant content. Again, web users are
impatient; they are not going to read huge blocks of unformatted
text on the screen. They want well marked, bite size pieces of
information. |
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Use contrasting colors; a dark text on a
light background or the other way around, so reading it is easy
and doesn't make people's eyes hurt. |
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In your page layout, use enough white space
around blocks of text, around graphics, and on the outer edges
of the page. This makes your page visually more balanced and
more attractive. Cell padding and cell spacing within a table
are an easy way to quickly create this white space. |
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Use a color scheme of maybe 3 or 4
coordinated colors for your entire site. Using more and
unmatching colors will make your website look unprofessional. |
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Fix broken links. There is nothing more
annoying then to click on a link and it takes you to a website
that no longer exists. There are website tools that will examine
your website for broken hyperlinks. |
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