If you've ever seen one of those websites filled with
jumping animated gifs that take a year to download, text
that's purple on a blue background, or screeching midis
of songs you never liked anyway, you know that web design
can be done badly. That's not much of a surprise, since
anything that can be done can also be done artlessly,
and often is, sadly enough.
Web sites can also be extremely well-designed, though.
I'm sure you've seen a few of those sites too. And there's
an art to that. When making a web site, there are a number
of things we at Robyn A Harton Creative keep in mind so
that your site doesn't end up looking like an artless,
annoying piece of cyber-flotsam.
Give the site a "look"
One of the things that is very important and that we keep
in mind is making a a web site is just that: a site. Each
page on the site does not stand alone, any more than each
page of a printed book does. Can you imagine if a different
color ink was used on every other page of a book? It might
come out looking like the printer was drunk or blind.
And it would be very distracting, too. Just like the printer
works to make an entire book look like it belongs together,
we do the same with web sites. We design the pages of
a site to LOOK like they came from the same site and not
like a collection of unrelated page links were just thrown
together.
Sites that load slowly lose viewers
If people don't stay to look at what's on your site, the
site isn't doing anything useful out there. To help make
sure people don't flee from slow loading sites, we keep
graphics to the minimum of what is needed to convey it's
message. Unless there is a reason to do differently, we
work to stick with the the 30 second or 60k rule: a site
shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to load on a 28.8
modem connection, and/or be over 60k including graphics,
text, javascript, etc. According to those who study such
statistical things, more than 30 seconds to load using
a 28.8 modem (still the standard for these stats) is "taking
all day" to load. And if it takes all day to load,
chances are people won't stay to find out what your site
has to say to them.
Don't damage the viewer's eyes
You do not want to blow your viewer's retinas. A viewer
might injure his nose banging it against the monitor trying
to discern what that dull orange text on a brown background
says. He might freak out and leave if there are so many
psychedelic bright colors in the background that he feels
like he's accidentally ingested some kind of hallucinogen
with his coffee. If it's not readable and easy to look
at, folks are likely to run for their sunglasses and never
come back. So we strive to make your site readable and
easy on the eyes.
Keep the site's PURPOSE in mind
Obviously, these are guidelines and not rules written
in stone. That's where the next thing I have to remember
comes in: What's the site for? A commercial site wouldn't
need the heavy graphics that an art gallery site would.
And it's even more critical to make it a fast loading
site if the site owner risks losing a customer because
the site takes all year to load. However, no one will
lose money or sleep over the fact that Aunt Jane's pet
page of her 7,000 cocker spaniels takes a few extra seconds
to load. When it comes to gallery sites, for instance,
to some extent the load time simply has to be sacrificed
in order to accomplish the main goal of showing the graphics.
The trick is that we work to stay in balance by keeping
the site's purpose in mind.
By keeping these things about web sites in mind, and
being creative in the way these principles are applied,
your web site will come off more as an appropriate, useful
work of art than a hack and slash created by a 4 year
old with finger paints.
