Developing a Website for User Interaction

One effective method for creating a successful website is to develop in a way that encourages interaction from visitors. If visitors are involved with the site there is a greater chance of repeat visits as well as improved loyalty. Think about some of the websites that you visit on a regular basis. Many of them get you involved in one way or another.

On the internet today there are a number of relatively simple things you can add to your website to encourage interaction from readers. Here are a few possibilities.

Steven on January 17, 2008 | Filed Under Web Design | 3 Comments

The Essential Website Usability Checklist

Give me almost any website and I will point out at least one common usability mistake. Chances are your website is included in that group. You could be missing out on sales, loyal visitors and links due to a usability oversight that’s easily fixable.

This post is a simple 13-point usability checklist for webmasters. Ever good website must be able to answer ‘yes’ to each of these points. How does your site measure up? Feel free to score yourself out of thirteen and share the results in the comments section.

1. Your essential navigational elements are easy to find

The navigational links you want readers to use most often should always be close to the top of the screen. Stuffing important navigational elements in the footer area is a worrying trend I see becoming more and more prevalent. Remember: it’s not true minimalism or simplicity if you’re taking away or hiding what’s important. Essential navigational elements should never be treated like clutter.

2. Your hyperlinks are easy to pick out

Not everyone visiting your site has 20/20 vision, not everyone can distinguish between colors and not everyone has their screen set to a bright resolution. It’s essential that your links stand out for all users. The simplest and most effective way you can ensure this is to double-format your links by changing both the color and the style of the hyperlinked text.

Skellie on December 11, 2007 | Filed Under Web Design | 15 Comments

3 Great Sources for Free Scripts

Web designers and developers are always looking for new ways to improve their sites and make them more interesting and useful for visitors. In some cases this can easily be accomplished by adding something to your site that you don’t even need to create. There are a number of large websites that contain free DHTML, Ajax, JavaScript, and more that can be added to your site very quickly (and for free).

Steven on December 4, 2007 | Filed Under Web Design | 2 Comments

8 Bad Decisions When Starting a New Website

When starting a new website there are a number of decisions that you will make that can have a huge impact on the long-term success of the site. Many times these decisions don’t seem as important as just getting the site up and running and as a result they don’t get the attention they deserve. Here are 8 decisions that can cripple your chances of building an effective website.

1. Free or Cheap Web Hosting - Many aspiring website owners are tempted by low cost hosting options. It’s understandable that someone would want a low-priced or free hosting company when starting a new website, but this can have serious consequences. Free hosting will be slow and will most likely include ads on your website that you have no control over. Even low-priced hosting tends to be slow and the customer service and support will almost certainly be inadequate.

You don’t need to spend a fortune on hosting. In fact, quality services are very reasonably priced . What you will quickly learn is that your hosting company will strongly influence the performance of your site. When your website goes down because of inferior hosting you’ll understand the true cost of not spending a few more dollars each month for a better option.

Steven on November 29, 2007 | Filed Under Web Design | 46 Comments

PNG Alpha Transparency in Internet Explorer

Most casual web developers (and a fair number of professional developers) use JPEG or GIF images on the web, but there is another contender out there: PNG, which stands for Portable Network Graphics.

Why use PNG?

Better compression without loss of quality (i.e., you don’t get those weird "artifacts" that show up when you crunch a JPEG image)
Larger color palette than GIF
It’s open source!

Jeremy on November 21, 2007 | Filed Under Web Design | 7 Comments

Conditional Comments for Internet Explorer

If you have been writing code for web sites for some time, you will have noticed that Internet Explorer is notoriously strange in its rendering behavior. If you write valid, clean code, your site will likely look nearly identical in the latest versions of Firefox, Safari, Netscape Navigator, Opera, and Camino, but when you pull it up in IE, suddenly your layout is askew.

The old model was to use JavaScript or another scripting language to determine the user’s browser, and deliver content/styles appropriately. However, there has been another solution in place since IE5, which is some simple proprietary Microsoft tags called Conditional Comments.

Jeremy on November 13, 2007 | Filed Under Web Design | 2 Comments