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The three main activities of visiting a web site are reading text, viewing images, and interacting with its interface. The point of your web pages should not be to show off your ability to dazzle or what special tricks you can make a computer do. The point of your web pages are to reflect the purpose of why you decided to create a web site altogether.
Provide a text equivalent for all content that is not text. This means that you should include alternative text for images that you decide to include in your web pages, especially if those images are used to represent hyperlinks. This way, users who are unable to download your graphics know what the meaning of that image was.
Include navigation tools in your web pages so that users can easily navigate to different sections of your web site. This can include having an index, a navigation bar, or a site map, among many other possibilities.
Always assume that the visitors to your web site are different. Never think that everyone is going to have the latest version of web browsers and the like. Make sure that your web pages work in a variety of situations that reflect the different environments that people may be viewing your web pages in. For example, try to make your web pages work on different of web browsers.
Be sure to define key terms, abbreviations, acronyms, and specialized language. Not all readers are going to immediately what these may stand for, or they may be different from what the reader is expecting. By defining this things, you can add clarity to your web pages in that people immediately know what you are talking about with any second guessing.
Have consistency between your web pages. This means that any behaviors that one page has with roll-over effects, menus, and navigation tools should be replicated with each successive web page, so that each web page acts and feels the same. If each page has this, then users are more likely to understand your site and make better use of it.
Try to keep distracting elements to a minimum. Avoid having blinking text at all costs. Also, keep banners and animations to a minimum as they can affect how easily a person can concentrate.
Avoid having very large graphics on your web pages, unless they serve a point of making your information much more clear. These graphics can take a very long time to load on some people's browsers, making you page much less desirable to view.
Created on
March 23rd, 2001.
Please direct questions and comments to: Webmaster.
