Top Three Web Design Misteaks (sic) And How To Avoid Them! Continuing Studies CS 21: Beginning Web Site Design November 2015

Top Ten Web Design Misteaks (sic): Misteak #1 Designing your website for your needs, not the needs of your visitors. A web site shouldn’t be just a marketing tool for you – it should be there to help your visitors achieve their goals. People go to websites for one of 4 main reasons – don’t make it difficult for them! They want to: Get information. Make a purchase or donation. Be entertained. Be part of a community. ‘bad’ examples: http://www.gotoscw.com/ -- try to buy items! http://tinyurl.com/old-brownuniversity -- try to click Annual Fund http://tinyurl.com/old-globalaigs ‘good’ examples: http://givingtostanford.stanford.edu/ http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ http://paypal.com/

Top Ten Web Design Misteaks (sic): Misteak #2 Designing your site in a way that people can’t figure out what they’re supposed to do. It should take no more than 3-5 seconds to be able to figure it what you can do on your web site. ‘good’ examples: http://www.learningguitarnow.com/ http://www.w3schools.com/ ‘bad’ examples: http://www.arvanitakis.com/en/ http://www.pandminc.com/ http://www.snarg.net/ http://web.archive.org/web/20070115231803/http://www.marshill.org/

Top Ten Web Design Misteaks (sic): Misteak #3 Don’t use fonts or content that makes it difficult to read Don’t make the font size any smaller than 80% of the default size for the browser. Don’t use graphics as text Don’t use dense text Don’t do “mystery meat navigation” Use this tool to ensure that your text is in high contrast to the background: http://www.accesskeys.org/tools/color-contrast.html ‘good’ examples: http://metaverse.stanford.edu http://www.duckduckgo.com/ ‘bad’ examples: http://www.wherever.com/ http://www.macys.com http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/ http://tinyurl.com/old-havenworks http://www.historianofthefuture.com/ http://www.bellads.info/ http://www.flatpakhouse.com/ http://www.bluebell.com/ http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/web-design-question-which-looks-like-a-dentist-1.html