Saturday, January 5, 2008

Designing webpages

Ben Hunt writes on the principles of web design

The Golden Rule
Everything that goes into your web site must have a purpose.
Every single element and decision must help users achieve their goals and support the site's goals.

How people use web pages
They move quickly because they don't like looking at the screen
They're impatient - they tend to click the first promising link, and often don't wait for pages to finish loading
They don't like to read, scanning text quickly for clues
They're looking for things to help them do what they want to do


Ideal web design process
1. Know what you're doing
2. Know what the site needs to do
3. Know what the site's visitors want
4. Get a good picture of the personality and style of the web site
5. Sketch out highly successful scenarios
6. Organise views into a site map
7. Sketch the essential features & look
8. Map your visitors' attention
9. Arrange the visual elements to work together

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