I’ll preface by saying this is something I sent around in an email within work acouple years back so it was never formatted for the web. I have recently neededto reference it when talking to a few clients so I’ve put it up here for othersas well. I will come back and format it better later on but for now this will haveto do. I’ll also continue to update it and add new links as I see fit.

  • Websites shouldn’t ever disable the back button (Flash/AJAX/Frames)
    • Links
    • Summary
      • Since 60% of users employ the back button as a primary means of navigation, disablingit can prevent 60% of your users from finding information they want or frustratingthem into not using your website.
      • Flash, Frames and AJAX havethe potential to disable users back buttons (the 2nd most used feature on the webnext to clicking on links)
      • AJAX is technology that allows for the website to effectively refresh and shownew content without actually refreshing the entire page
      • Flash is compiled code run by a plugin called appropriately: Flash. The entireflash object needs to be loaded before it can be viewed and used. Flash can be usedto create an entire video game to something as simple as making a picture fade inand out on the screen.
      • Frames are a form of coding a website so that parts of the website are loadedin “frames” like windows in a house.
      • Both Flash and Ajax should be served by the website’s content and not the otherway around. Meaning Flash and Ajax should not serve main content. An easy way totell if this is occurring properly is to look up at the URL bar of your browserand if you expect to be able to copy/paste that link to someone and have them seethe page you’re looking at then the page is working properly. If you copy and pastethat link and then when clicked on, it takes you to a different page than what you’relooking at, AJAX/Flash is operating incorrectly.
        • Example: maps.google.com
        • If you navigate to a location on maps.google.com and then copy the link in theurl to someone, they will not see the location you have navigated too. This is anincorrect implementation of AJAX. Google tried to solve this problem by providinga link on the page that you should copy and paste to a friend, but in my opinionthat doesn’t solve the problem correctly.
      • Employing these methods also disables the ability to bookmark a site
      • Printing the webpage can have problems
      • Search engine’s don’t crawl the content properly or won’t find it — this is killingour client’s pageranks
  • Scrolling vs Above the fold or 4:3 aspect ratio
    • Links
    • Summary
      • Sites should embrace the medium they are using to present material. Web pagesscroll, don’t fight the medium — don’t fear the fold
      • Flash should not be used as a content delivery tool as it can’t scroll with thebrowser and in turn fights the medium and instead tries to redefine what a web pageis. We should not be doing this.
      • While hard to show fonts properly, what are you telling your user when you don’tallow the browser to search that font, and aren’t allowing them to change the sizeetc. Again, this is NOT what a web page is.
  • Websites are viewed in F shaped patterns
    • Links
    • Summary
      • Most websites should follow an F shaped reading pattern to better match what usersare used to seeing/reading content and using a website
      • Exhaustive reading hardly ever occurs so if the information is important makesure it’s condensed and located at the top of the page.
      • Make sure headings are used correctly and properly display the information youwant addressed
  • Don’t piss off your users
  • Information Architecture
    • Links
    • Summary
      • Websites should strive to have as much information accessible to users in theleast amount of clicks possible
      • This can be achieved with clear and concise navigation, well organized content,and an easy to use interface
      • Usually a large multi million dollar website will go through a few months of IAwork before it even gets to design. Wire frames will be made, all the informationwill be organized thoroughly and tests are run on individuals to see how fast theycan find information. The wire frames are tuned and eventually released to designfor compositions to be made for the end website.
      • It should also be noted that Intro Pages and Flash movies put in front of contentis a bit no-no because of the findings of Information Architecture. Meaning youdon’t want to frustrate the user by making them click more times than they needto in order to get to the content they want to see.
  • Search Engine Optimization
    • Links
    • Summary
      • Search engines see websites only as the raw code; this means they can’t “read”the text on images, flash modules, or any type of included file format. They ONLYread raw HTML text.
      • Search Engine Optimization is in itself its own beast, meaning making a websitecontinue to rank well in search engines requires a constant attention to the websitein keywords and content structure as well as marketing. It’s not something thatcan occur overnight or only once. It’s a very time intensive and expensive endeavor.
      • Site ranking occurs from 3 main areas:
        • Number of other quality sites linking to content on your site
        • Amount of relevant content on your site
          • meaning content that matches or has something to do with the keywords on yoursite as well as the links on your site
        • Good Code – Keywords, Clean Content (no content in flash/active x) and Valid HTMLmarkup on your site
    • Make sure you don’t try and cheat search engines – they will ban your site/blacklist it and then there’s pretty much no coming back after that
  • Users form an opinion about the website in 1/20th of a second
    • Links
    • Summary
      • Users will decide if they like the website or not, and if they do like it, theywill give excuses for bad content
      • If they hate it, they will leave the site and never come back.
      • It’s extremely hard (impossible?) to earn a users trust back once they’ve decidedthey don’t like the look/feel of the website
      • USERS LIKE TO BE RIGHT
        • if they think you’re site is ugly/bad/untrustworthy, they will not even wastea whole second on the site
        • if they like the site, they will make excuses as to why the content isn’t good,or why certain things won’t function exactly right
  • Website Credibility is directly relational to your design not your content
  • Consumer Investigations
    • Links
    • Includes articles: “Home Buyer Beware”, “Take the Money and Run: fake online escrowservices”
    • Users are already weary of real estate/mortgage forms as emails regarding mortgageinformation is the second most received type of spam mail.
  • Make forms user friendly
    • Links
    • Summary
      • Don’t ask for information that the user doesn’t have readily at their fingertips
      • Ask for the absolutely MINIMUM amount of information possible, no one likes tospend a ton of time filling out forms, and there’s plenty of websites on the web,one of them will most likely have a much easier to use form
      • Don’t force a user to input data in a format they don’t know. Make sure to tellthem (example: phone numbers ###-###-####)
      • Don’t give cryptic error messages
      • Always tell the user where they are in the process. If they have to fill out aform, make sure they know very well what will happen after they fill it out (willthere be another one? Will they get an email? Will they be added to an emailinglist?)
  • Top 10 mistakes on the web in 2005

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