subject: Good Web Site Design Programming [print this page] There are very few web pages on the internet that clearly state what is good web site design and what is not good web site design. That's because it's completely subjective, like what is beautiful and what is not beautiful. So it takes a highly opinionated strong ego like this one to step in there and say "OK folks, this is what it is." Now I jumped on board the internet back in 1994 after I began to believe that not only would it be "The Next Big Thing", but that it actually does offer the human race the potential to connect all our minds together in an entirely new way. When I decided to create my own web site, I first had to take a good look at as many music and other web sites as possible in order to learn what not to do before I could visualize what I should do. I've visited thousands of web sites since then, I've talked to countless net surfers about what they like and don't like, and we all tend to agree on some major points:
1.Text that is hard to read, including use of tiny fonts against black backgrounds and illegible fonts against picturesque backgrounds.
2.Anything that slows page downloading speed. Net surfers are impatient and they will exit out of any site where pages take too long to download or have plug-ins that have to be downloaded in order simply in order to view your page.
3.Lack of a clear "Mission Statement" on the home page. Web surfers want to know immediately what a web site is about. They don't want to have to read several pages to get it and then decide the time spent wasn't worth it.
4.Lack of clear instructions on the home page explaining how to get essential information from the site. Web surfers want to surf with speed, not study in a library.
5.A home page that requires you to click on something to enter the site (that's called a portal page). What's the point? You've already entered. Why in the world would you care to enter twice? Would an architect design two doors you'd have to go through to get into a bathroom? Would a sane contractor ever build it that way?
6.Confusing site organization, difficult navigation, dead links.
7.Boring writing. Not much can be done about this one. Creative writing isn't available from a web site designer at any price. If they were creative writers they wouldn't be doing web site design.
