Best Practices of Web Designing

Recently, I was searching for ‘basic unix commands’ and ‘tar -I option’ on Internet, and came across some websites which were totally messed up in terms of layout, design and content. The content was, of course, available in the site but then I had to do a ‘ctrl + F’ to search for those words on the page. This compelled me to write down some of the best practices that should and must be kept in mind while designing a website.

If your website contains private information, limited to a group of individuals or is an experimental site, you may not have to pay attention to what I am saying here. But if it matters to you that people search for information on Internet and find your site, they come back to your site often, then in my opinion you should follow and implement these best practices in your website(s) for better user experience and success.

HTML and CSS Standards: They go a long way beyond your imagination. At the time of designing and testing the website, everything might work just perfect but you should not forget that there are more than 4-5 browsers that people use. Everyone uses their preferred browser than using the one your site works with. So, always follow the HTML and CSS standards and test the sites in at least Firefox and Internet Explorer before you publish your site on Internet. Refer to these - HTML Specifications and CSS Standards.

Contact Information: It could be your personal or a professional website but in either case you should provide your contact information on the site. It always helps to have at least a contact form on the website. You may opt to have a contact form built into the site or a remotely hosted site if you do not have enough technical skills.

Sitemap: It’s one page dedicated for providing your visitors with a navigational map of all content items, sections, categories and contact information. For websites with handful of pages, it does not matter but sites with large amount of content must have a sitemap in their site.

Navigation Menu: One of the key elements of a website is its navigation menu. It should be easy to locate on the page, must be easy to navigate and links on it should be descriptive in nature. Avoid ‘click here for detail’, ‘click here’ and other such words which do not tell your visitor where the link will take him.

Graphics: Isn’t it really nice to have a good looking website? Don’t make it too jazzy, your content should be visible too! Avoid graphics that is not required. Simple is better, consider Google in this case, they are very simple in terms of graphics and are respected for their simplistic approach.

Site Search Engine: If your site consists of many pages then consider having an Internal search engine for your site. You can opt in for Google’s free site search or use any of the free site search scripts available on net. One such tool is Google co-op, which can be customized to become your custom search engine. You can configure it and limit the sites that it will search. Very helpful if you have a chain of websites and are looking to provide cross-site search to your visitors.

Colors, Fonts and Text: You like orange but I like black. Yes, everyone has their own preference and we should remember that when we select color schemes for our website. You should select a scheme which will appeal to a broader group of audience and not just you alone. When it comes to fonts, don’t use fonts which are not common and also do not set a fixed font size. Use a relative font size as far as possible. All the links on your site must be clearly visible and already visited links should have a different color.

On the point: Don’t write as if you are writing for a book, write for a website. Condense your content to a certain extent and use simple examples instead of writing 2 pages to explain something. Simple is Great!

Bookmarks: Provide a link on very top of your website for visitors to bookmark your site. Most don’t unless asked, so always put that link on all your pages since you don’t know which page user would like to bookmark. Also, consider using del.icio.us bookmarks on your site, visit http://del.icio.us/help/savebuttons for further information.

I hope the best practices mentioned in this post will be useful to you and your website. Good luck!