10 golden rules for great website design


1 ensure a quick download

traditional guidelines indicate 10 seconds as the maximum response time before people lose interest. On the web, users have been trained to endure so much suffering that it may be acceptable to increase this to 15 seconds for certain pages

2 Beware cutting edge technology

It's not worth the the time to figure out how to work a site when there are five million others to go to, so avoid gratuitous graphics and plug-ins such a Java and Flash on your site

3 Keep it calm

traditional giudelines indicate 10 seconds as the maximum response time before people lose interest. On the web, users have been trained to endure so much suffering that it may be acceptable to increase this to 15 seconds for certain pages

4 Limit your frame

Splitting up a page into frames is very confusing for users. it can also prevent them from e-mailing a recommended URL to other users

5 Choose a simple address

Keep your website address, or URL (Unique Resource Locator), simple or you will confuse people

6 Stay up to date

So many sites are continually updated that users do not stand for stale information and any site that is not current is bound to lose credibility

7 keep scrolling short

Only10% of users scroll beyond the information that is visible on the screen when a page comes up. All critical content and Navigation options should appear on the top part of the page

8 Provide a site map

Don't assume that users know as much about your site as you do. They always have difficulty finding information, so add a site map and a search function

9 Standardise your link colours

Links to pages that have not been seen by the user are blue; links to previous seen pages are purple or red. Don't mess woth these colours as consistency is key

10 Brand all your pages

Make sure that every page includes a clear indication of which website they belong to since users may acccess pages directly without coming in through your home page. If you don't use frames (see rule 4) this is not a problem