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A designer’s worries do not limit to the aesthetic beauty of the website that he is creating. As discussed in the previous post, ease of use also matters greatly in the overall importance of your website. You will find websites that do not appear very inviting, but are a real treat while surfing. And on the other hand, you may also find pages dipped in colors giving the most elegant visual appeal but making you struggle to find that small log-in button. So, while the designers must emphasize upon considering web-users’ need in designing pages, they must also consider any constraints that may come in their users’ experience. Here are a few of them:
- Design for the popular browsers. There may be hundreds of web browsers out there but about 95% of all netizens use only from a few popular browsers to choose from. Internet Explorer (the leader), Firefox (catching up fast), Opera, Chrome and Safari are few of the better known browsers – and they mostly cover almost anyone browsing the web. So while designing your pages, make sure that the users of these popular browsers are at least taken care of.
Also ensure that your web-pages are validated by w3c so that they function adequately with all browsers.
Popular Operating Systems and their Share
- All browsers are not the same, and neither are their users. When it comes down to your personal computer each user has their own preferences. For e.g. some people like larger fonts, some small, some like their screen resolutions to be 800 x 600 while others like 1024 x 768. Another factor that you may want to consider is that while most people do use Broadband internet connections these days, there are in fact many who still have dial-up connections. So, you may want to take them into account as well.For varying screen resolutions, an easy way to go about is to use fluid layouts. Similarly, if your website contains a lot of flash, you may also want to make an html version of the same. Our good ‘ol dial-up folks will love them!
- Keep your website Operating System-friendly.You can never be spoiled for choice when you seek to build a website that is compatible with the prevailing and popular Operating Systems as there are only a handful of OSs that virtually dominate the OS market. Refer to the chart above.
- Design for 1024 x 768 monitor resolution.A good more than half of all users online, operate at the 1024 x 768 resolution setting. Therefore, designing your site for the said resolution will make your site look good and function properly on the computers of users employing the same setting or even higher resolutions.
- The Page length fundamental.The choice of line lengths becomes crucial when a Web Page contains prose text. Faster reading speeds can be achieved by employing long line lengths but it is prudent to use short line lengths as, statistically, users seem to prefer them.
- The verbosity versus accessibility equation.Designers have to strike a trade-off between the amount of content on a Web Page and the accessibility of the information the user desires on the page. Excessive scrolling is an avoidable evil, especially when large amounts of texts are required to communicate the desired information to the user. Frames are a handy tool to keep the table of contents visibly separate from the rest of the content, in such a situation.
So, there you have it, the six general commandments you must be mindful of while designing your website. Although these pointers may appear elementary, yet they are often overlooked even by professional web designers resulting in creation of Web Pages and/or websites that fail to command user traffic due to certain basic mistakes in their design structure. Be aware, be smart. Your business is at stake. And to quote a wise man for a prudent conclusion -
“The Devil is in the details”
