» Things To Think About.... Web Pages

***If you're doing a "professional" site, aka one that you are trying to make a profit off of, getting a designer is honestly the best way to go. There is no "instantly know how to design and market your website!" pill you can take, and web designers won't just make a functional page, a good designer should be able to sell your page and its products to your customers.***

Just about anyone can make a web site these days, especially with "Web Pages for Dummies" programs where you don't have to know a digit of code! You'd think that would be a good thing right? Don't have to go have some fancy pants web designer, you can do it yourself! I've seen some of these pages turn out really well... and then I've seen some turn out really, incredibly bad (yes, I have web page nightmares, you would too after seeing the blinking neon pink background...). I realize not everyone wants, or can afford to have a professional web designer do their pages, so I've put together a "Things To Think About" article since "How do I make a web site?" lands in my inbox so often I'm just cutting and pasting this stuff anyways.

When designing a site, don't just toss it up on the web, think about it, and plan it out. What group of people are you trying to attract? What will attract them? How do you stand out, or in some cases don't, from your competitors? What are you trying to "sell" on your site? How easy is your site to navigate? Are you drawing attention to what you should be drawing attention to on your site? Draw a site map to organize your site before you make it, if it gets messy and confusing you're gonna need to work on it, keep it simple! I'm willing to point people in the right direction and give feedback, I just don't have time to do Web Pages 101 for everyone who asks (plus there are plenty of online tutorials for that, it's how I learned!).

» Color

Pick a color scheme and stick with it! This will create consistancy throughout the website and make it easier on the visitor's eyes - changing the colors constantly can be painful! Also be careful of what colors you use, don't use neon/bright colors excessively (Note: this can include white!), and never as a background! The more visually comfortable the website, the longer the user is willing to stay on it. To test this open up the site full screen in a completely dark room. Let your eyes adjust to the page (30 seconds to a minute). Start navigating the site - if it hurts your eyes too look at it, the page is too bright. If you go from one page to another and the change is enough to make you wince, the color change is too drastic... and why is there a color change anyways?

There are thousands of great color schemes out there, so don't settle for the "normal". White and black backgrounds are very common, and common is not what you want! Both Yeager's Frogs and FrogDay 2006 sites use non-traditional color schemes - Yeager's Frogs uses more earthy tones while FrogDay 2006 goes for the bright and eye catching. The colors help make these pages memorable, and thats what you're aiming for - but you still have to be careful that the page isn't "too much" and is still easy to read. FrogDay 2006 is bordering on "too much", and if I added a couple of pics it would become way too busy, but its just an informational site with no pics so thats ok. Yeager's Frogs has a lot of pics on it, and the more sedate color scheme doesn't conflict with the pics, or draw attention away from them (they are the selling point of the site!).

» Layout

Layout should be easy to navigate and uncomplicated. This is where following the common is actually a good idea, too extreme and different a layout, if not clear cut, will really confuse the visitor. If its not easy to get around, they aren't likely to stay around to figure it out, and won't recomend the site to others. It can be hard to be different and unique if you're using a standard layout, but you make up for that with different color scheme and graphics.

Make sure the content you want the visitor to see is content they see on the screen when it loads. If they are running an 800 x 600 resolution, that isn't the amount of web page they are seeing full sized, its more like 770 x 400. Plan your content accordingly, and don't assume the visitor will scroll down to read the rest of the content.

» Pictures

Have pics of what you are selling, and have quality over quantity. The better the quality of pics, the better this reflects on you and your site - one or two really awesome pics will sell your product better than pages and pages worth of ok ones. If you don't have a good camera, borrow one, or someone with one and the skills to use it well. Use pics that represent the products most accurately to the best of your ability. I took 1500 pics of native creatures over the 2005 summer, but you only see about a tenth of those pictures in my "Going Native" gallery, and a good chunk of those are only in there to represent the species - not my best work and wouldn't be there if I had better ones. Get the picture? (Oh, I just crack myself up sometimes...)

» If it moves... Kill it

The only thing that should be moving on the page is the mouse curser of the visitor and the page itself as it scrolls. Things that move, blink, and/or follows the curser are both an annoyance and distracting from the site - the two biggest things you don't want your site to be. It's easy to think stuff thats moving or flashing will get the visitor's attention in a good way, but it usually comes off as overboard. I like my text to be sitting still when I try and read it, Thanks.

Ok, so maybe you are desperate to get visitors to read that one important notice so you make it scrolling. Sorry, but if it doesn't get there attention as a bright and blaring header at the top of the page (large, bold font of a color that stands out significantly in the color scheme), then they aren't going to read it now just because you made it move. That's the downer about visitors, you can't get them to always read what you want them to, and you'll get redundent questions even if you clearly put it on your site. Making it more annoying won't change that.

NO BLINKIES! They might initially grab the attention of the user (which, when used "correctly" is the only reason they are used - but honestly there is no "correct" way, just a slightly more reasonable explaination) but after the 3rd blink, they are just annoying and distracting - same deal as the scrolling text.

Curser trailers are EVIL. This is just one of those cool little tricks you can toss on a web page these days, and people really love them because they seem fun and cool. They are also incredibly annoying while trying to navigate a page, and are extremely distracting and come off as childish.