Aesthetically Challenged

There’s more to a layout than matching color choices, artistic talent and (not so) transparent I-Frames. Ease of navigation, loading time and other practical necessities should come first.

Only 596 Clicks Away

In order to make a reviewer (or any visitor) happy, their first impression of your site plays a rather important role. The first thing reviewers (should) look for, is the number of doors they have to open before reaching your site. In other words: the number of introductory pages that lead to the actual content. Ideally, there shouldn’t be any.

That being said, consider the following:

Redirecting URIs like mydomain.tk only lenghten your site’s loading time. Aside from this, they fling an insane amount of ads toward the visitors.
Providing previous URIs just so you can show off your fancy ‘moved’ sign, is annoying as well. Don’t lead visitors through 27254 pages only to show them your splash page.
Don’t litter your splash page with links, rotation images and/or other ads: they only make it cluttered. Besides, do these sites link you on their main/splash page?

Pop-Ups: Bane of Your Life

Of course, pop-up blockers greatly decrease this problem. Nevertheless, having an extra useless window is still annoying. Reviewers are not unreasonable, they understand that not everyone is hosted on a paid space, but most free hosts generally give you the option of displaying banners, rather than pop-ups. Even if this is not possible, try to keep the number of windows, a visitor needs to have open, at a minimum.

Javascript powered dialog boxes, that ‘talk’ to the visitor are the height of annoyance; especially since some webmasters like to have over ten of them. Don’t use pop-ups to bypass repeating backgrounds: learn CSS instead.

Chances are that 90% of your visitors are multi-tasking:

they listen to music
they have a browser window open to check the weather in France
they are having IM conversations with 3 friends
AND they are attempting to complete their essay on why Shakespeare was/is/will be such a brilliant literary mind (due the next morning)

Now you come up and kindly present them with yet ANOTHER window. Can you say livid?

How could you avoid these problems? Here are a couple of suggestions:

Don’t open random links in new windows.

Unless, the link in question is an external link or a picture, you shouldn’t feel the need to impose yet another window upon the unsuspecting visitor.
Pop-up layouts should be avoided at all costs.

Visitors might mistake them for ads and close them without checking first. Also, pop-up blickers will not allow them to open.
Your “VOTE ME” banner is just plain annoying.

First time visitors are hardly going to vote for you just because you stick some animated picture in their face. Returning visitors will click even a ‘less obvious’ link, if they like your site.

The First Glance

While most reviewers ask you about the type of site you have submitted, they rarely remember said type for more than 3 seconds. A rather frustrating experience, but we have to admit: unless we’re searching the net for professional reasons, our attention span is of… what was I saying again? Granted, reviewers’ attention span is SLIGHTLY better ( emphasis on slightly). This is why you should try to make your site’s first screen reflect the site’s purpose.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll make use of a gigantic font size to tell visitors that your site is dealing with advertising various fizzy drinks. If possible, choose something appropriate to its purpose. In other words: don’t put a half naked celebrity on your blog header… unless of course you ARE said celebrity.

Aside from this, make sure that the visitor will need to make as little effort as possible to view your site. So DON’T force people to view your site in a certain browser, with a specific resolution and having 234057 plug-ins installed. As for music that starts automatically… DON’T. Whatever the reason, just don’t do it.

Elegance and Usability

You should always do your best to ensure your visitors’ stay is as pleasant as possible. Since webmasters often find themselves hard-pressed to combine these two, I have compiled a list of suggestions that can help you here:

Colour heavy is not always pleasing.

Just because you use 20456 colours to amaze the visitor, your design won’t necessarily be an elegant one.
Have a focus point.

Make sure that one element in your graphic stands out more than the rest, so that the visitors’ eyes will be drawn towards it.
Usability.

Use readable font sizes (i.e. 11-12px or 8-9pt): no one likes to squint. Explain everything as clearly as possible, not everyone likes guessing games.
Least amount of scrolling.

Few visitors go beyond the first screen and even fewer are likely to scroll beyond the second one. Be as concise as possible, very few people have the necessary patience to read 5-feet-long essays.
One set of scrollbars.

Ideally, only one set of scrollbars should be used and NEVER more than two. Also, make sure that the scrolling directions don’t overlap (especially for users who use the mouse’s scroll button).

The last part is especially the case with I-Frames, where both the main page and the i-frame scroll vertically; in some cases you can’t even see the bottom of the I-Frame‘s scrollbar.

Navigation

Ever seen those arrows around buildings pointing people to different places? Just as you navigate your way through a building’s intricate corridors following arrows, the same way should you provide directions to your visitors.

So here are a couple of basic rules to keep in mind:

Suggestive link text

I’m most definitely the last person to militate for the ME, YOU, SITE, EXIT type of navigation. Nevertheless, don’t name the site section pretty daisy¹ .
Main links in visible place(s)

Don’t hide them behind the easter bunny’s left leg. The main navigation should always be straight-forward.
Link back to the main page.

Each sub-page should have a link to the home page and – if necessary – to its sub-section. Avoid using the javascript mimicking the browser’s back button; visitors may have accessed said page using a Google search, so why send them back there?
Few main sections

I’m referring here to the main navigation. Don’t use more than 5 sections for this, visitors are likely to forget them fast, anyway.
Provide explanation where necessary, but don’t exaggerate

You feel that not everyone might realize that “Professional Slang” stands for site related information? Good: use a tooltip to explain that (i.e. <a href=”s.htm” title=”About this site”>Text</a>). Nevertheless, if your link text says
About me, there’s no need to point out that it houses information regarding the webmaster.

In conclusion: it’s important to have a visually pleasing layout, but it’s even more important to make it usable. No matter how gorgeous a layout is, if it takes over 2 minutes to load, uses circles as links and a minuscule font-size, visitors are unlikely to spend much time there.

Unless of course your site name is Pretty Daisy [↩]

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