Web Development Guidelines
author: Martin "mpot" Pot
date: 19 October 2004
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Contents
Introduction
Website Aims
When developing a website, there are always many different ways in which you can design, implement and maintain the site.
However, it's important keep the following aims in mind. A webmaster typically wants visitors to:
- have a good experience
- navigate around the site, viewing additional content
- remember your website
- re-visit your website at some time in the future
- recommend your website to others
Don't Annoy Visitors
If you annoy visitors to your website, be it with excessive animated graphics, or excessively slow page loading, they are unlikely to stay long enough to view additional content, unlikely to have any good memories of your site, and are unlikely to visit it again.
A Webmaster's Delight
As well as keeping your visitors happy, a webmaster wants his websites to be easy to maintain, easy to debug, and it needs to be easy to add additional content.
Background
This article is based on my experiences in designing and maintaining various websites over the years, as well as my experiences as an end-user, visiting other people's websites, and is designed to provide some guidelines and recommendations to webmasters.
Brand Recognition
Domain Name
A catchy domain name is preferred, rather than hosting a website in the free webspace you're probably getting from your ISP. Visitors are much more likely to remember
http://catchydomain.com
rather than
http://www.isp.com.au/~myusername/mywebsite/
Email Addresses
Another benefit of having a domain name is that you can use email addresses associated with that domain. If your website is being used for a business or commercial enterprise, email addresses at that domain name present a much more professional image than, say, myusername.com.au.
Free Promotion
An added benefit of using an email address associated with your domain is that you will get some visitors to your website simply because people may notice the domain name in your email address, and are interested enough to visit the website. Just using such an email address can be a very cheap and easy means of attracting some visitors.
Easy Navigation
Menu Location
Put your navigation in the place where most visitors expect it to be - ie, have your menus on the left side or across the top of each page. Visitors who can't find their way around your site are unlikely to visit more than one page.
Home and Site Map
Provide an easy way for visitors to get back to the front page. A site map is always useful, as it allows visitors to get a list of all pages on the site. Ideally, a link to the site map should be placed on each page, ensuring visitors can find it with minimal effort.
A site map also provides benefits whenever search engine robots are indexing your site.
JavaScript Navigation
Fancy javascript fly-out menus aren't guaranteed to work in all browsers, so you're likely to leave some visitors stranded with no way to navigate around your site.
Google Site Search
Adding a Google site search to your site provides visitors with an easy mechanism to search your site for specific content.
Visit the Google Web Search and Site Search page for more details on adding this free service to your website.
Site Design
Designing the structure of a website is a science, but there are some key things to keep in mind. Where possible, use short, readable URLs, and always have a default page in each directory.
For example,
http://mywebsite.com/webdev/guidelines/
is much easier to remember and type than
http://mywebsite.com/my_stuff/how_to_design_websites_2004/web_dev_g_01.html
Short URLs
Short URLs provide many benefits, including
- easy to remember (always useful)
- easy to type (people are lazy....)
- easy to pronounce (important when people verbally tell others the URL)
- easy to deduce other su-blinks (ie, http://mywebsite.com/webdev/ should take the visitor to the previous level)
More Information
For more information on designing URLs, refer to these pages:
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