Designing websites often leads to numerous errors and inaccuracies in usability.
No matter how many interesting features a design may have or how visually appealing it is, the difficulty in understanding and perceiving the necessity of various elements completely outweighs the positives. Considering that everyone has different tastes and preferences…
This is one of the main reasons why I stopped pursuing design. It’s fortunate I didn’t go further, as good design requires the study of many qualities.
For general knowledge, here are ten distinguishing features of good design and a website in general:
- Ease of Reading Information: The color of text should easily contrast with the background. Similar shades strain the eyes and irritate visitors. Choose a color scheme that is pleasing to the eye. Visitors come to a site for information and reading it should not be difficult.
- Simple Navigation: Site navigation should be intuitive. If using graphic buttons, they should be duplicated with text links, as some users disable image viewing in their browsers (not everyone has a 100 Mbps connection).
- Information Viewing Comfort: The site should be easily viewable on monitors of any size.
- Fast Loading: Graphics, sound, and animation add to site loading times. Therefore, don’t overuse them. If visitors have to wait too long for the site to load, they will leave without waiting for it to fully load and may not return.
- Absence of Dead Links: The site should not contain links that lead nowhere. All links should work, whether they are internal or external.
- Frequent Updates: People will return to a site if it has fresh and interesting content.
- Target Audience Relevance: The site design should match its specialization. For example, a design suitable for a women’s forum would be unlikely to fit a fishing site.
- PDF Copies of Main Material: Research shows that most people do not like reading from a monitor screen. This means that important information that the site offers should be available for download in PDF format and for printing.
- Feedback Form: Visitors are more likely to fill out a feedback form than click on an email link. It should be simple and not require unnecessary information.
- Display in All Browsers: The site design should display well in any browser and in different versions of the same browser.
Today, it is very difficult to find a site whose design can truly be called flawless in terms of usability. This is due to insufficient attention being paid to accessibility, and some not paying any attention at all.
It is important to remember that if using a site causes difficulties for a user, they will leave and not return, regardless of the amount of graphics and animation in the design.