Seven Golden Rules for World Wide Web Page Design

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Seven Golden Rules for World Wide Web Page Design

• Mary L. R. Jones
• mljones_at_hfnet.bt.co.uk
• 1996 IEE Colloquium on Exploring Novel Banking
  User Interface Usability Challenges in Design
  Evaluation

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1. Decide on your criteria for success

• Make sure you know why you want to be on the WWW
• Success means different things for different
  sites.

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2. Decide who you want to impress

• You cant please everybody
• Defining your audicence makes design decisions
  easier.

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3. Let the information drive the design

• Design the site structure around the information
• Prioritize information
• Establish user interest
• Graphics should support the information design

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4. Make it easy to see whats there and how to
get to it

• Make your site structure explicit
• Tell users where they are
• Provide a home

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5. Dont expect your WWW pages to be just like
your paper publications

• Branding is more thatn a logo
• Exploit the medium and add value
• Reading from the screen is hard

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6. Use graphics with care

• Hire a professional graphic designer
• Make sure your designer understands the medium
• Apply your graphic style throughout your service

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6. Use graphics with care (continue)

• Graphics can be boring
• Less can be more
• If in doubt, leave graphics out
• Test your graphics on different browsers

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7. Keep your users interested

• Monitor and maintain your site
• Provide genuine content
• Use other media to generate interest in your site
• Get users involved