When it comes to building a web page there are some definite rules one should follow so it can be viewed by as many people as possible and not offend anyone.
Here is a summary of the 10 web site commandments as discussed in Jim Edward’s article.
1. Thou Shalt Have Purpose
Your whole site should have a clear purpose otherwise visitors will click away.
2. Thou Shalt Be Lightweight
Avoid the use of large graphics or too many tables..they slow down the site.
3. Thou Shalt Load Fast
Lots of graphics, scripts and flash are just some of the things that will slow down your site.
4. Thou Shalt Not Use False Code
Don’t include code that can’t be read or plug-ins that require the visitor to have it on their computer. Sloppy code may also prevent some browsers from displaying your pages correctly.
5. Thou Shalt Respect the Search Engines
Build search engine friendly pages otherwise you won’t get much traffic. Only obtain links from sites that compliment your own content.
6. Love Thy Surfers and Visitors
Design for the main browsers and screen resolutions of 800X600 pixels or larger.
7. Thou Shalt Not Annoy
Don’t try to “wow” your visitors with the latest technologies such as flash that are not search engine friendly and cause pages to load slowly.
8. Thou Shalt Not Scroll Sideways
Avoid creating pages so large that your visitors need to scroll sideways to view them. Vertical scrolling is fine and normal.
9. Thou Shalt Stay Consistent
Don’t use a different design, color or navigation menu for every page. It only distracts your visitors and prompts them to click elsewhere.
10. Thou Shalt Cultivate Subscribers
Gaining new subscribers means you are continually building an audience of people you can market to. These often will become your future customers.
Great commandments. I wish I had heard about number 6 earlier. I created my site 2 years ago in a wider format and after writting hundreds of pages, I had a professional tempate designer who convinced me to go to width 800. However, none of my pages looked right then. I had a wide navigation panel on the left side, which I had to convert to a horizontal menu as it no longer fit in the reduced page width. I had information on the right side which also had to be moved. In the end, I had to redesign every single page…. took ages.
Based on this, I’m tempted to suggest a 11th commandment:
11) Get a professional graphics designer to do a smashing layout so that you will never want to redo all your work. Alternatively, use a package like wordpress or use CSS so that you can easily reformat all pages automatically rather than doing every one by hand.