h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

First of all, a website should be easy on the eyes. No flashing banners, no bright and hideously contrasting colors. The text should be large enough to read comfortably, but not so large that one feels like they're being bludgeoned with a line of Times New Roman.

Too much content on a page is overwhelming, but on the other hand, too little looks sparse and uninteresting. One should try to strike a balance between the two. Any links to further info should be uncluttered and easy to spot, and the overall site should be laid out in a somewhat logical manner, making it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they're looking for.

Personally, I find it maddening when a site sports atrocious grammar and spelling, particularly if it is a business-related page. In the physical world, that would be unacceptable, but for whatever reason many on-line proprietors seem to feel that no one notices or cares about such things. More sites have unwittingly lost my business because if I can't trust them to be reasonably literate or professional, I'm certainly not going to trust them with my hard earned money!

Oh, and for God's sake, no more pop-ups!

Myjo

P.S. H2G2, btw, is wonderful. It's interestingly and beautifully designed, and the search function makes it easy to find whatever I'm looking for! Thanks!

I agree with everything you said.

The absolute basics of web design, I think, involve actually having something to say in the first place. I have one client that wanted a web site, but didn't really know what they wanted it for. They gave me their organization's name and address and I had to pretty much invent the rest of the site. Having said that, though, I do think that it is important for every business and organization to at least have some web presence (if only so I can find them when I need them), but a little content would also be helpful.

Then I have another client that knew exactly what they wanted on their site. They agreed with me on all of my design concepts -- a web site should be simple, with small graphics (no more than necessary) and no unnecessary scripts or blinking things -- but they took it a step further and designed it themselves. In the end, they got a web site that looked like a disjointed brochure, and they wouldn't trust any of my design ideas to make it better. I designed their second site from scratch without their input. It's much better (if I may say so myself).

Colors are also immensely important on the web. Sticking to the standard pallette of web-safe colors is the first step, but creating a theme and choosing colors to suit that theme also helps. Color can be used to set the mood, and it doesn't take too many. I usually start with my two main colors (usually with white as a background for text-heavy sites), and choose an accent color to go with them. These three colors are usually all I need to construct a simple, elegant web site.

Then there is the question of whether all the links work, the information is up-to-date, and the site is well-organized. Also, is it clear where you are supposed to go? Some sites suffer from information overload (H2G2 can sometimes be this way) where there is so much you can do but you're not sure how to use the site to best get at it all. This is where search fields and site maps come in (in response to the question in the introduction, I use site maps all the time).

I love web design. Can you tell?

Ah, the joys of designing sites for other people

I have to admit that static sites make me bored very quickly. There is enough easy to use coding stuff out there that can take websites a bit further, and make them have some actually use.

I suppose that in a way sites fall into two catagories, Static and Dynamic.

Static sites tend to just be either a single page or several linked pages that say one thing, no matter how in depth that might be. To update them involves changing the code of the actual page itself.

Dynamin sites use languages like asp and php, usually hooked into a sql driven database. This way allows for the site to change, to have a flow to it. And to be updated a lot easier.

But there are also subcatagories as I see it. Sites that look good, and sites that actually have some content. Unfortunatly it seems that most website designers either come into the trade from an art background, giving you a site that looks superb once it's finally loaded, but doesn't actually do much. Then the other sort of the technical background people, who produce sites that use the latest technology, take advantage of browser differences, screen resolution, download times and all that, but er, look cruddy. Often just plain text on plain backgrounds, and when they get told by their mates to make it look better, you find your animated giffs.