What Are the Essential Criteria for Effective Webpage Design?

[motai]

I was curious after reading Loren Booda's Best personal web page thread and wanted to figure out what everyone here thinks are the best critera for designing webpages.

One of the reasons I liked this forum over the other sites as far as webdesign goes is its super-fast loading times (we have the admins to thank for that one ).

Anyway here are some of my tips (most of these are pretty much common sense):

1. Site should be able to be navigated without much loading time. I have the tendency to leave sites that take up most of my bandwidth.

2. Site should have a consistent theme, should not jump around ad hoc. Keep a color theme, and stick with it. Find or make colored backgrounds that fit the theme.

3. Site should not be cluttered. Nothing ruins a practical website more than stuff crammed in all over the screen.

4. Generally try to avoid popups as much as possible. These tend to get annoying after a while.

5. The website should have lots of information easily accessible through easy-to-see links.

6. To save loading times: Compress images to .jpeg and optimize to around 80-90%. Some of the higher-quality images have very large sizes but file sizes can be reduced by 60-70% when optimized. Tools such as the GIMP come in handy for such procedures.

7. Try to be colorful, but not overly dramatic. A super-flashed up site with all the latest kinks will slow my internet connection to a crawl. This is especially important for a business website who wants to attract customers.

8. Make sure the fonts are readable on the background color/image. Too many times I have seen unreadable websites like this. I don't want to highlight things to read them. Gets annoying fast.

9. Try to keep site layout as simple as possible. This is especially true for business websites. Personal sites can generally get away with being gaudy, even though I don't like gaudy websites nearly as much.

One of the most annoying websites is http://www.ivillage.com that my mom occasionally surfs on. Around 60% of the time the page loads with errors and is a bandwidth hog.

Also another annoying (yet mysteriously funny) site is http://www.seizurerobots.com :

Feel free to add in anything that I may have missed.

 

[Evo]

One of my pet peeves - the "Dead End". You scroll down to the bottom of the page and then you have to scroll all the way back up to the top to go to another page.

You need to have links to other pages at the top AND bottom of the page.

Also, the "Neverending Page", instead of separating the content into multiple pages, there is one endless page where you just keep scrolling down and down and down...

 

[R0man]

Your criteria for webpage design are well thought out and practical. I agree that a fast loading time is crucial for a successful website, as users tend to lose interest and leave if a site takes too long to load. Consistency in design and color scheme is also important for creating a cohesive and professional look. Cluttered websites can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate, so keeping the layout simple and organized is key.

I also appreciate your mention of avoiding pop-ups, as they can be quite annoying and disruptive for users. In addition, making sure that the font is readable on the background is crucial for user experience. It's important to consider the accessibility and readability of a website for all users, including those with visual impairments.

I would also add that mobile responsiveness is becoming increasingly important in today's digital age. With more and more people accessing websites through their phones and tablets, it's important for a website to be optimized for different screen sizes and devices.

Overall, I think your criteria for webpage design are practical and can help create a successful and user-friendly website. Thank you for sharing your insights and tips!