Design Hints Over the years I have been involved with the review and deployment process for thousands of Web sites. Time and time again you see the same mistakes being made. This page contains a collection of helpful hints that I have collected to help those who are getting started with creating or maintaining a Web site.

General Don't make people think. This means that as far as is humanly possible, a Web page should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory People don't read pages they scan them. They are usually in a hurry and don't need to read everything. Plus people are good at scanning because they do it all the time. Don't use the words "click here" as links. Incorporate links into the content of your text Never use under construction signs or have pages noted as under construction or coming soon. This is a frustrating delay to those who expect see valid information. Either remove the links to these pages or add appropriate content. Design Be consistent with design elements. For example make sure you don't have some bullet items are indented and some not. A great variety in the presentation of bullets and lists for will be distracting for discernible reason. Efficient use of the page is much appreciated by users. People dislike doing unnecessary scrolling. Keep pages as short a possible. Break up large pages. Graphics Don't have graphics that are large in size (i.e. 100+ kb) as they take too long to load and people will not wait. Text Keep word to a minimum. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words and a paragraph no unnecessary sentences. A spell check everything often. Spacing between titles, subtitles, subheads, etc. should not be varied. Be consistent with things from page to page. Keep your writing style consistent. Use friendly "webspeak", formal "corporate speak" or what ever you want. Just be consistent. Links Identify where the link will take you. People like to know where they are going before they get there so that they can decide if they want to spend the time. If your link will result in a download of a file let people know how big it is. Group links on one page where possible. You have 2 links on a page, leading to one page with one link, and another page with 3 links? People's time must be valued. Put all 4 links on one page. Download links should have file type and/or size noted. People using a modem get very frustrated is a large unexpected downloads.