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*Top 10 Golden Rules in Designing a Website*

Matt Haig offers 10 golden rules to help you avoid common website pitfalls
Net news <http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/internetnews>

*Thursday September 14, 2000
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>*

One of the most important consequences of the recent collapse of many
high-profile dot.coms has been a back to basics rethinking of what
actually constitutes a good website. What is emerging is the
understanding that good website design is more than a question of
aesthetics. There is a fundamental difference between a good-looking
site and a good site.

Boo.com, for instance, was a visually attractive site yet poor
navigation and usability contributed in no small way to its failure. We
are learning that on the net, beauty is only screen deep, and not a
solid enough basis for a long term relationship with a target audience.
From Amazon.com to eBay, the internet success stories are surviving on
more than their looks alone. To succeed, websites need to match style
with substance by taking the internet on its own terms.

*1. Understand your site's purpose*
The visual appearance of a website depends entirely on the objectives
you want it to achieve. For information rich sites, the emphasis should
be on straightforward navigation rather than fancy graphics. Think of
how Yahoo! and other portals present their material. If, however, your
main objective is to consolidate your brand identity, it may be more
appropriate to limit the amount of text on the site and concentrate on
the graphics. A website is not a fashion statement, it is the starting
point for your relationship with a target audience.

*2. Keep it human*
Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist, refers to bricolage as
the opportunism of those who work with their hands, creating things out
of whatever is lying about. The web works the same way: there is no set
way of designing a website. Designers use tried and tested images,
formats and links to each other to create pages. According to the New
York Times' David Weinberger, "this makes the web unpredictable,
creative and always the result of human hands".

*3. Be imperfect*
Due to its vast, complex and decentralised nature, the web will always
be, in the words of Tim Berners-Lee, its inventor, "always be a little
bit broken". The web's frailty makes it more human and also renders
perfection impossible. The politics of "being right" must not therefore
be transferred to your website; rather, the aim should be to start a
two-way conversation with your target audience, not to tell them, "this
is how it is".

*4. Avoid the language of advertising*
Despite the fact that, according to Forrester Research, spending on web
advertising will climb dramatically from £1.75bn (last year's total) to
£187bn in 2004, it is already being undermined by some harsh truths.
Most people now appreciate that having your page turn up in the top
search engine finds is far more effective than web advertising. If the
role of advertising is to present the best possible face of a company,
this is made redundant by the nature of the web, where criticism will
always be there: just ask Nike or MacDonalds. The speed of "word of
mouth" online is restricted only by how fast people can type, so it is
worth remembering that when designing a website, honesty is always the
best policy. As Rick Levine of Sun Microsystems has put it, "word of web
will trump word of hype every time".

*5. Keep it simple*
This is perhaps the most important rule of website design, yet it takes
a lot of time and effort to keep thinks straightforward from a visitor's
perspective. Stephen Freeman, creative brain for Retail.co.uk, draws
attention to this paradox. "Simple isn't easy", he says. "Sites that are
overly confusing and filled with flashing gizmos that perform clever
tricks without rhyme or reason are the ones which were created in an
afternoon". Take a look at Epic Heroes <http://www.epicheroes.com/> and
The Organic Shop <http://www.theorganicshop.com/> for inspiration.

*6. Use straightforward navigation*
There are a number of ways you can make it easy for people to find their
way around your site. One way is to make sure no page of your web ite is
further than three clicks away from any other. Another is to tell people
where they are. You can do this by providing a site map or by changing
the colour of the current section in the navigation area.

*7. Satisfy itchy fingers*
Goldfish are said to have an attention span of five seconds, which is
approximately two seconds longer than a visitor to your website. If they
are visiting your site via a search engine, they may have up to 10 other
sites they want to visit before they log off. The trick is to make your
design stimulating while keeping it user-friendly. Slow download times,
repetitive text, and lengthy e-commerce processes must therefore be
avoided.

*8. Don't cheat*
Locked within the HTML code of every website is the metatag where web
designers can list keywords to help control how the page is indexed on
search engines. There are a number of rogue designers out there who
misuse the meta-tag in order to make their site more attractive to a
search engine. Words that they know are frequently typed in to search
engines will go in the metatag even though they are not relevant to the
site. This is the cyberspace equivalent of genetic engineering, and can
seriously damage a site's reputation.

*9. Less is more*
As web software has developed over the years, many web designers have
felt the urge to demonstrate all these advances simultaneously on one
web page. Multiple animated images, blinking text, Javascript status bar
mes sages, rainbow-coloured divider bars and pop up windows may signify
hard work on the part of the designer but will also result in hard work
on the part of the user.

*10. Update your site*
A week may be a long time in politics but it is a lot longer in
cyberspace. Internet time is believed to move at seven times the
velocity of normal time. Many people who browse (don't be fooled by this
leisurely verb) the internet return to the same sites every day.
Information needs to be updated at regular intervals to keep a website
fresh.