Web Design Creativity

(Bear with me in this section. It haw not look relevant to the important topic, but I poverty to try to come one of the root causes of low-usability sites as a place with a production layout would hit been.)

Many newborn web designers poverty their website to look unique. They poverty their place to look special and memorable. As such, they hit a tendency to come up with every sorts of engrossing things to do with their site, including this production layout idea, so that it does not look same every another place on the Internet. Unfortunately, in so doing, as discussed before in my article on Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design, they haw sometimes unknowingly create websites that drive usability problems as substantially as search engine indexing issues.

Recall the (not so) early days of home screen computing, when some people used an operating grouping called MS-DOS. Contrary to what you haw think, not every programs that ran on DOS were command-line programs. There were full-screen or windowed programs same the ones you see on Windows and the Mac today. However, the duty of learning to ingest newborn programs on DOS was not as easy as it is to ingest a newborn aggregation on modern operating systems. Every aggregation had their possess artefact of doing things. For example, to save a file, assorted programs had assorted keystrokes and menus to accomplish the aforementioned task.

With modern operating systems, companies same Microsoft and Apple hit clearly-defined \"Human Interface Guidelines\" for programmers to follow. As a result, the program of meet about every aggregation on your machine is fairly similar. For example, to save a file in Windows, no matter what aggregation you are using, you crapper simply ingest the \"File\" menu and the \"Save\" component on that menu. Or hit Ctrl+S. Or utter the icon that looks same a floppy round on the toolbar. The standardization of the program means that anyone who has learnt how to ingest one aggregation will also know how to ingest another. You no individual hit to read the manual. After installing a newborn program, most people crapper simply grope around and still be able to accomplish their task.

Other sites have different types of guidelines. A medical website should be easy to read and navigate, along with be friendly and colorful. Looking for a doctor isn't always the happiest thing so the medical website design should provide comfort.

Web organization is pretty much the aforementioned way. Although there is no overarching organization to give a individual program guideline to specify that websites are to impact a certain way, there are millions (or more) of websites on the Internet that more or inferior behave the aforementioned manner. By their cosmos and similarity alone, these existing websites hit established a de facto standard. Users who know how to navigate a place with one of those standard organization styles will also know how to navigate another sites with the aforementioned artifact of doing things.

In another words, you don't hit to be a web guru or a usability officer to create a disposable website some more. Just ingest the trick of mass the standard pattern used by another sites - a one, two or three column website with navigation menus in the customary places (top, bottom, left or right), and the important content liquid downwards in the centre, links that impact same normal links, and so on. (See my articles on usability if you poverty more information.) By making your place operate in a standard way, visitors will automatically find your place usable, because they've already learnt it from their past undergo with another sites.

I'm not trying to tell you not to be creative. Even within the constraints of a \"standard\" appearance, you crapper still create sites that look visually pleasing and interesting. (Although you should also remember that the bulk of the uniqueness of your place should not be in the attendance but its content.)