Web design guidelines for creating user-friendly web sites

Tell people what your website is about as soon as they get to your welcome page. Try and get inside the head of your web audience and use words and terminology that they will understand. ‘Providers of web-based billing solutions’ makes more sense that – ‘Business e-enablement and convergence specialists’. This is also key when it comes to optimising your website content so your site can be found easily by people using search engines and directories.

If your main navigation menu is at the top of the page on the Welcome page, don’t move it to somewhere else on the page on the second level pages.
Also, if you can - provide an obvious link back to the Welcome page.

This title is displayed in the top of your browser window when viewing a web page. Search engines use the title tag when listing your site in search results.

Alt tags are the words that appear when you place your mouse over a graphic image on a web page. Alt tags are read and the words displayed for those people who are unable to see the graphics, as would be the case for a blind person. For example, if your primary navigation menu was created using graphic buttons, the ALT tags for each menu button should say what the button says or does. Don’t give your menu buttons ALT tags such as ‘button 1’, ‘button 2’. Instead, they should say something like ‘Company Profile’, ‘Browse Products’ etc.

If your web site has long scrolling pages, provide ‘back to top’ links at the bottom of the page or even periodically throughout the page content (but always in the same position).

When linking to another person’s or company’s website why not launch the other person’s website in a new browser window? That way the user can easily get back to your website by simply closing the new window that has been launched.

Don’t assume that everyone uses the same operating system (PC, Apple Mac) web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator) and monitor resolution (800x600, 1024 x 768) as you. Get different people on different browser platforms to view your pages to ensure they look ok.

Avoid horizontal scrolling of your web pages unless this is a deliberate design feature and consistent across your website. It can confuse people and can make page printing difficult.

If you have lots of it, break it up into small readable paragraphs, sections or bulleted lists. This helps with onscreen reading.

Get someone else to check your content for spelling and grammatical errors.

Where appropriate, particularly if you are trying to sell a product – provide links to view larger versions of your product images.

Be mindful of the ‘3-click rule’. If it takes 8 clicks for a customer to dig down to the information they want you could lose a potential customer. If your site is large and comprehensive then provide tools such as a keyword search and/or text-based site map.

If you think your target audience is going to want to print pages from your website, either design your site so that it is printer friendly or provide ‘printer friendly’ versions of your web pages.