Internet played major roles in our lives, in the field of business, leisure, educational and personal. Web and web browsing is a part of our life and its here to stay. The mobility of the internet connection today is fast becoming boundless, wireless connection or wi-fi is everywhere and it’s just a matter of time when all households and people you meet on the street are connected to somewhere in another part of the globe.
The more the internet expands the more it needs greater reach. That is why those people who work with it behind the scene needs to create a usable, quality and sustainable websites for its growing population of users. Free templates and open source CMS are being left behind by the ever increasing need of the people to use a more reliable and suitable websites for their needs.
To quote Jeffrey Zeldman: “…the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.”
Website is the primary tool of engagement. It really doesn’t matter what’s in it whether it sells medicine, photos, t-shirts, articles or dog food as long as the people who patronize it converse, supports the product and there is an interaction going on-it’s alive.
There are three main components for a lasting website. These three components merge together to create a site that is tested through time to attract visitors and perform the functionalities a website should have. The three main components are Rock solid code, thoughtful layout and design and engaging interface.
The Rock Solid Code
A valid HTML and CSS markup is the main groundwork of every lasting website. A good solid coding in a website maybe likened to building a home. If a contractor or a builder uses sub-standard materials such as cheap woods, skip a few nails, cheap paints, run of the mill roofs and pocketed the plumber’s fee. The house may look great from the outside and may work fine for a time being, but the real test of time comes when the residents finally moved in. Guests are being invited to settle for a while when suddenly a couple of problems here and there finally sprout out.
Leaking roof, busted plumbing, paint chips, doors that have a broken knobs and leaking faucet. Troubles such as these can be prevented if only the builder took time to construct the house carefully adding up a lot of concerns. Doing things right the first time around could save you from impending problem in the future and this is true in building rock solid codes in your website.
Taking time to think and build it using quality code structure and frequently debugging it is a strong foundation for a quality website. The practice of building a rock solid code does not only benefit your visitors but it also serves you as a developer of the site. Headaches caused by frequent alerts and phone calls whenever something goofy goes off to your site as visitors browse is definitely troublesome. Your website should at least works well to those browsers that have the least standard compliant for you to be able to serve the majority of the internet users.
Check out these resources to help you out with the accessibility and standards
An Engaging Interface
In a martial arts school, most of the students who join and enrolled in the self-defense lesson have one vision in mind: learn how to do flying kick in a Jackie Chan or Jet Li stance. They want to kick those bad guys in their school that one time or the other bullies them and impress girls altogether. During the course of learning, they slowly realized that those fancy karate moves are for theatrical purposes and none of it happens in the real world where self-defense thrives. Those walloping kick are purely entertainment in nature and not for actual fights.
Those fancy karate moves if being used against the real martial artists will only be met with ordinary and simple blocks and punches rendering it useless. The trick to an effective fighting is simple basic techniques with solid foundation.
The karate principle is the same in building a website. The objective why you should build a website should be clear in the first place. There should be no distractions such as fancy displays of fireworks, tricks and quirks. Things that do not serve to contribute to the real objective of the site should be avoided.
The purpose of the site should be your road map in every step of the way towards your goal. Just imagine if one day you go out on a freeway and suddenly realized that the road signs are of different fonts and with chic designs. I bet chaos in the freeway will take place as the main purposes of road signs lose its meaning and intention. Getting too fancy and ornamental often defeats the real purpose of the website.
Thoughtful Layout and Design
Layout and design requires a lot of time and thinking, adjusting, editing, tweaking and tinkering. This is the part where you can do all you want in your power to make everything in your site shine. With the help of a valid markup and intelligent interface, your website can stand out some more.
It should look good in a well-balanced perspective serving its purpose right. The intelligent interface makes your website inviting to visitors, matched with a brilliant design will makes it visually appealing to users making them come back for more.
When designing a website, consider things such as:
· Does your design serve the purpose of your website visually?
· Does your design look too busy or cluttered?
· Does your design look so simple?
· Does your design contributes to the well-being of the content or provides distraction?
It is advisable when starting out designing your project to sketch it or plan it in a separate sheet of paper. Outline it to get the general idea and view the overall layout that you really want. You will get the over view of how the elements interact with one another.
Creating something “out of the box” in web designing should be restrained as much as possible for the sake of overall website functionality. There are some elements in wed design that can be regarded as mainstays and cannot be compromised such as the fonts and sidebars. Instead of thinking how to revolutionize it, work with it.
There are lots of references in the internet where you can draw out inspiration to help you build the elements of your website, here are some of those:
Annoying Designs
The internet is full of such painful and annoying designs that makes a visitor run for exit as fast as he arrive on the site. One of such annoying feature is the Auto-play Music. I have experience opening multiple tabs in an attempt to do a multi-tasking research but end up annoyed in trying to find out which site played hip-hop and which one plays classical. There are certain sites like photography website that plays ambient music while browsing on through the photos to add more moods to it. However, leave the choice to your visitor whether they would like it with music or not by offering the ‘play’ button on the player.
Another such annoyance is the Small Font Size and those abnormally teeny weenie tiny fonts almost invisible to the naked eye. Your website will likely to fail in the usability category if your font does not conform to the common standard of readability. You cannot possibly engage your customers to read, much more to buy what’s on your site if you just try to hurt their eyes and give them headaches in trying to decipher tiny words. Reading is a self-motivated element to every website and your site should entice every visitors to read and re-read.
The main point here is for your site to have a common sense, its layout and construction should be logical enough and reasonable for the common mind. There is no sense in trying to be cool and hip if your site failed in functionality. If you are just trying to impress first time visitors, you may succeed on that but only for a while. However, if you want a strong and sound site that will last a long time, better opt for features of value and not the skin deep ones. Create one with web standards, intelligent layout and good design and you can reap all the benefits later on as time passes.
You May Also Be Interested In:
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }