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Website Development & Hosting

6. Long Scrolling Pages

Although users are willing to scroll beyond the information that is visible on the screen when a

page comes up, all critical content and navigation options should be on the top part of the page.

Also,  punctuate  your  long  page  with  back-to-top  links,  at  appropriate  points.  Where  possible,

minimise the length of your pages to ease readability.

7. Lack of Navigation Support

Don t assume that users know as much about your site as you do. They always have difficulty

finding information, so they need support in the form of a strong sense of structure and place.

Start  your  design  with  a  good  understanding  of  the  structure  of  the  information  space  and

communicate this structure explicitly to the user. Provide a site map and let users know where

they are and where they can go. Also, you will need a good search feature since even the best

navigation support will never be enough. 

8. Non-Standard Link Colours

Links to pages that have not been seen by the user are blue; links to previously seen pages are

purple or red. Unless absolutely necessary, retain these colours since the ability to understand

what links have been followed is one of the few navigational aides that is standard in most web

browsers. Consistency is key to teaching users what the link colours mean. 

9. Outdated Information

Budget to hire a web gardener as part of your team. You need somebody to root out the weeds and

replant the flowers as the website changes. Most people would rather spend their time creating

new  content  than  on  maintenance.  In  practice,  maintenance  is  a  cheap  way  of  enhancing  the

content on your website since many old pages keep their relevance and should be linked into the

new pages. Of course, some pages are better off being removed completely from the server after

their expiration date. 

10. Overly Long Download Times Caused by Complex Graphics

Traditional human-factors guidelines indicate 10 seconds as the maximum response time before

users lose interest. On the web, users have been trained to endure so much suffering that it may

be acceptable to increase this limit to 15 seconds for a few pages. 

Even  websites  with  high-end  users  need  to  consider  download  times:  it  has  been  found  that

many users access websites from home computers in the evening because they are too busy to

surf the web during working hours. Bandwidth is getting worse, not better, as the Internet adds

users faster than the infrastructure can keep up. 

11. Temporarily Disabling the Use of the Back Button

The Back button is the lifeline of the web user and the second-most used navigation feature (after

hypertext links). Users happily know that they can try anything on the web and always be saved

by a click or two on Back to return them to familiar territory. 

Copyright  NESIS 2002

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