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In this article I learned about the top ten things that people do wrong when they are designing a web page. These ten things are used to help people make their pages more user friendly.
1. Bad Search
- Many search engines don't handle words with typos or hyphens very well. This makes it difficult for users, especially elderly people, to find something if they don't know exactly what it is they are looking for.
2. PDF Files for Online Reading
- PDF files are hard to read and get in the way of browsing smoothly.
3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
- The color changing of links makes it easier for people to navigate, they can see where they have been and make an effort to avoid the sites they didn't like and find ones that they did.
4. Non-Scannable Text
- A wall of text is hard on the eyes, include paragraphs, bullets, and other variations to not be so hard on the readers eyes.
5. Fixed Font Size
- A fixed font size makes it so that a person that has a hard time reading can't adjust the font to their desire, remember this is the user's site, not yours, make it pleasant for them.
6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
- Pages need to have titles that are easy for search engines to lcate them, for example, leave out The or Welcome, just put the name of the site.
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
- People have a tendency to ignore advertisements, avoid anything flashy that might look like an advertisement, or it most likely will be ignored.
8. Violating Design Conventions
- People spend most of their time on other sites, follow these conventions to not confuse them (or they will leave your site and go back to the ones they are used to).
9. Opening New Browser Windows
- Pop ups are like advertisements, they anoy people. Avoid them.
10. Not Answering Users' Questions
- If you can't tell the user what they want, they will go to somebody elses site to find their answer.
From this article I learned that the most important thing is to keep your user happy, the page belongs to him, not you. The reason you want to keep your user happy is because if he isn't happy on your site, he will go to somebody elses. The way that I will apply this to my page is that every time that I make any change to my page I will ask myself if this change will benefit me or my user.