Things to consider for your website Part 3

In parts one and two of our series we covered consistency and knowing your audience and their equipment. The final part of our series covers layouts.

Aesthetics are the description of the look and feel of a site. The grid structure is based on the idea of breaking down the screen into a grid based on the unit of measure ken in the book User Centered Design by John Cato.

All websites struggle with the dilemma between sufficient navigation versus the amount of content on the screen. On one hand you want the end user to be able to know where to go to find what they're looking for at all times during their visit, but you also want to provide them with enough content to make their search seem justified. Amazon.com uses a lot of screen space for navigation and a little space to deliver the content through. That isn't good. "To quote Mies van der Rohe, "less is more." Organize the interface by reducing un-needed visual elements as much as possible. That is, remove all unnecessary visual "noise." This will make the important objects that are there stand out even more. Moreover, as Edward Tufte stated, "it is not how much space there is, but rather how it is used. It is not how much information there is, but rather how effectively it is organized" (Bernard:http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/visual.htm).

Some pop-up windows serve a good purpose. Gaining user information without losing their place on a site is a good use of a pop-up window. Now with the development of tabbed web browsing pop-up windows are seen as unwanted advertisements. Bombarding a user with advertising in multiple seemingly never ending windows is a nuisance to the end user. Knowing the difference between the two different situations is very important.