Ten Principles Of Effective Web Design

smashingmagazine.com — Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has established as a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. In order to use the principles properly we first need to understand how users interact with web-sites, and how they think. Feb 10, 2008 View in Crawl 4

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keyme Feb 11, 2008

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Great article. I logged in just to digg this.

unixalan Feb 11, 2008

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i didnt realli read it, i just scanned that article.....

haecceity Feb 11, 2008

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There's some very interesting stuff in the article. But...How many people did like I did and skipped virtually everything before the first numbered point? Shows these people haven't applied what they know. Plus, these guys could seriously use a proofreader. Another important part of effective web design is proofreading. I mean, "Web users are inpatient." Really? Web users are in hospital for a brief time? And how do they square the advice, "Make use of effective writing," with a verbose and ungrammatical sentence like, "Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has established as a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design"?

krinthekuz Feb 11, 2008

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and the "goodness" of this list depends on how your target audience thinks. do i really want a site designed for idiots who don't read any of my content and just waste my bandwidth? of course not. im not designing sites and applications for people who think like this. i'd rather have 10 users who appreciate my message than 1000 users who come in and skim the page and leave.and it also helps that im not in it for the money. the second you start doing things on the web for the money, you've just put a price on your head. im not saying running ads is wrong, but when you make a blog and post garbage on it solely bc you need more content for more clicks, you've lost sight and you're just another myspace.

jpbimmer Feb 11, 2008

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There's target audience and there's actual audience. The majority of the people coming to any site are going to be from the latter group, and that's why having a good understanding of how "most" users look at the web is something important. Idiots who don't read any of your content and waste your bandwidth aren't idiots, they just didn't find anything you had to say important.It's called a web browser for a reason.

chrisbarr Feb 11, 2008

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Agreed 100% - I've got "Don't Make Me Think" and it's a great book. A very helpful resource to refer too, especially when you have a client that wants a lot of text - you can actually explain to them why that's not the best idea.

whatsupwithjack Feb 11, 2008

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Trying to incorporate ALL of those principles into a single website is nearly impossible. It's great that they have a website which exemplifies each tip, but is there really one website that does it all?

sam3 Feb 13, 2008

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Interesting theory, but I don't buy it. Not all users think the same or read the same. So many things can effect how you read, if you want to get technical, environment, emotions, multi-tasking and on and on.But, Dugg for the sake of argument and an article with actual substance.

bedigornitos May 22, 2008