web design

When designing a website or online service, companies often have a whole slew of great ideas for functionality. When is enough enough? Can a simple design suffice? How do you make choices about what features to incorporate?

Even the simplest of interfaces, Twitter, has begun to add more complexity with new retweet features, lists, trending topics, and more. Aesthetically, “good design” means design that is appealing to the eye, and is easily navigated visually. With this idea, it is important that complex interfaces are well designed so that the users who prefer simplicity do not feel overwhelmed. – Finding the Balance of Design and Functionality (ReadWriteStart)

designgeishaboy500 If you are creating a business website, or looking for ways to improve yours, here are some tips to consider:

Make it Clear – exactly what your company does should be available on the upper half of your home page.
Describe Benefits – Customers only care what benefits your product or services gives them.
Who Are You – Contact information should be easy to find (at least a link from every page, ideally a phone number or email).
Customers Need Support – If customers have a problem, support information should be easy to find. If the information you provide online isn’t enough, give them a way to contact you.
Minimize Clicks – Keep the number of clicks to a minimum – for any activity on your site, but especially for buying processes.
Purchasing Information – Give customers all the information they need to make a purchase on any product page and/or landing page.
Minimize Distractions – Keep flashing, moving and distracting items to a minimum – even if they provide additional information.
Design Down – Not everyone has state-of-the-art technology. Design for the lowest generally accepted standards (which are widely available around the web).
Consistent Menus – Menus should be consistent throughout the site to make it easy for customers to find things.
Clear Page Titles – Page titles should make it clear where a customer is – use descriptive words for both the web browser window title and for text on the page.
Don’t Touch the Back Button – Do not _ever_ disable the back button. Customers need to be able to back out of wherever they may go.
Avoid Popup Windows – unless they provide pertinent information to the current page and are initiated by the customer.
Let Your Customer Be In Control – any extra features, such as audio, video, popups, etc. should only activate when a customer clicks on them. Have you ever been at work when a website suddenly started making annoying sounds out of your speakers? Don’t do that to your customers.
Make it Readable – Fonts need to be easy to read in terms of size, font type and colors – include what color the background is. Make sure to use high contrast colors to make your text easy to read.
Whitespace is Your Friend – Space between items on your page is critical for customers to be able to scan through the page to find what they’re looking for.
Consistent Layout – Try to keep the layouts of your pages consistent, so at least your pages look like they belong to the same website. Navigation and information about where on the site a customer is should be in the same place.
Search Should Be Easy – Most people expect a search to be in the upper right region of a page – or at least near the top.

I intend this list to be a work in progress. What other good design tips should be used on business websites?

(photo by geishaboy500 @ Flickr CC)

Balancing Good Design with Needed Functionality

17 Tips for Good Business Website Design