We all want or pages to load as fast as possible. But when we develop our site, time constraints may prevent us from properly designing it for speed. Here are a few tips that should help:
1. Lay out your pages with CSS, not tables
2. Don’t use images to display text
3. Call up decorative images through CSS
4. Use contextual selectors
5. Use shorthand CSS properties
6. Minimize white space, line returns and comment tags
7. Use relative call-ups
8. Remove unnecessary META tags and META content
9. Put CSS and JavaScript into external documents
10. Use / at the end of directory links
For a more detailed explanantion read over this article (.pdf).
There are seven serious usability mistakes that most corporate websites commit. Interestly, these common errors are often products of sound principles that Web designers mistakenly apply:
1. Too Much Introductory Text on Your Landing Page
The worst kind of filler copy usually starts with, “Welcome to our site”, click on the blah, blah, etc. Telling people what to do on your site futile. The user will go where he or she feels like. People generally read very little on a website. Instead, users scan the page, picking out words that are relevant to them.
2. Not Showing What Your Site Offers to Users
Many sites are horrible at explicitly stating what they offer and how their services or products differ from those of their key competitors. Keep in mind that users will only spend a few seconds to scan teh site for what they need.
3. Using Gratuitous Animation and Graphics on a Site
The dirty secret among site owners is that they love to see cool animation and graphics, even though these don’t contain real content.
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Color theroy is a set of principles that enables the creation of harmonious color combinations via the comprehension of color relationships. Making things more complicated is the fact that color theory doesn’t take tints, tones and shades into account, instead it concerns itself solely with the base hues themselves.
There are significant psychological aspects to color; it’s a cultural signifier and can even affect mood. Much of this works on an entirely subconscious level. Marketing and design decisions have long been influenced by the psychology of color. Color schemes are picked for their subconscious significance or for positive associations with the intended audience.
At the most basic level, colors can be categorized by their attributes. Red-based colors are warm, while blues are cool. The use of neutral colors such as black, greys and whites, as well as some browns and beiges with the chosen palette limited to accent colors, can help to calm down a design, bringing greater harmony to the palette.
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Not only are users browsing your website looking for a reason to engage, but they are speaking to a coworker, watching TV, holding a conference call…you get the point. Internet users are notorious for multi-tasking and, in addition, there are many options out there for users to find the same information on your Web pages.
Increasingly, people are looking for past company or brand as a lone source of information. They are looking to competing websites, message boards, forums and each other.
So how do we compete and keep the users on our sites?
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