When building a website, there are several factors that a designer should take into consideration if they want users to stay on their webpage for more than five seconds. Too many links? Who wants to sort through 50 links to find the one page they want? Bad contrast? The user can’t tell what they’re looking at and they don’t want to spend five minutes squinting at the monitor trying to read one word. Images scattered everywhere? The user becomes distracted, gets frustrated, or eventually just wonders off.
I think you get what I mean by the design of a website is absolutely CRITICAL. The design can make or break a website just as easily as the content within. I took a look at a couple of local sites that aren’t necessarily horrible, but they are indeed violating a few rules of web design. Let’s take a look.
The first website I looked at for the design was the Labette Health Hospital website. Like I stated previously, not horrible but definitely could use some improving. There are links EVERYWHERE, and some of them are the same link in two or three different places. Now I don’t know about everyone, but most of the individuals I associate with would only go to that website for one reason: paying bills. At least they made that link somewhat easy to find. The next thing I found off about the site was the contrast used on some of the links. The side bars and links at the top of the page all consist of white font on pale green boxes that… well, they make the words difficult to decipher. If a person doesn’t want to be on the site in the first place and they can’t read the links, they’re probably going to navigate away from this site pretty fast.
The next website whose design I critiqued was the USD 505 Chetopa-Saint Paul Schools website. This is a site I’ve had personal experience with and could tell was not great before I even started going to school for web design. They have a cute little image slideshow at the top that would be neat for showing school events and student activities…. if they images were the proper size and resolution. Unfortunately, all of the images in the show are blurry and/or out of focus, but let’s move on. The site’s navigational features dominate the page and completely hide the news and contact information below. In fact, I had no idea that the news and contact information existed until today. Overall, the site has a really “unfinished design” feel that makes me want to turn tail and run.
As I stated before, web design is quite possibly the most important factor to consider when one is building a website. It can mean the difference between 5 visitors or 500. Some sites fail to follow the principles of good web design and it shows in their visitation stats.
Until next time!
SAikins Designs 