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Ten good practices of developing and designing a Web site. Select an area below:

1. Formulate a plan
Before you build a Web site, consider the following:

• What is the purpose of the Web site? Are you selling a product, advocating policy, educating readers or posting volunteer opportunities?

• Who is your audience?

• How do you plan to promote your site?

• If you are planning to fundraise online, what payment system do you plan to use?

• Who will design your site and for what cost?

• How often will you need your site updated?

Structure and design follow content. Once you have answered these questions and have shopped for a Web design team that suits your needs, you will be ready to address the practices below.

Please read Domain Name Selection and Online Promotion for information regarding the selection of a domain for your organization and effectively using e-mail to reach your audience.

2. Know your audience
Understanding your primary and secondary audience is important for any project you undertake. For example, an older audience may appreciate a Web site that has a larger font size and other studies show that children are more apt to click on a banner ad than an adult; find out who you are serving and tailor the page to meet their needs.

The Pew Internet and American Life Web site contains data, research and other information on "the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care and civic/political life."

3. Design for multiple platforms, browsers and screen resolutions
Besides knowing the demographics of your users, knowing what type of computer they use helpful as well. While the differences between the newer versions of Internet Explorer on the Mac and Windows platforms are few, older versions display Web pages very differently.

For example, a resolution of 640x480 means that your monitor, whether 15", 17" or bigger, will display 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels long. The bigger the monitor (and often the better the video card), the larger resolution you can use. You should never force users scroll horizontally to view content, so designing your Web site for a screen resolution of 800x600 is a safe practice. Most new computers default to 1024x768 on a 17" monitor, however, if you have an audience that is not especially high-tech, they may be viewing your page on a smaller monitor with a lower resolution.

Older versions of browsers for testing purposes can be downloaded at Evolt

4. Provide consistency in navigation
Users who cannot find items on your page will leave your site. Provide a consistent navigation structure with a link to your home page to allow predictability and ease of use. Also, do not be too clever in your site design. Unless you know your audience prefers abstract images and metaphors, keep it simple; use common names such as "about", "contact", and "help".

The Web Developers Virtual Library has a good article on navigation

5. Write quality code
Not all HTML is created equally. WYSIWYG Web design tools such as Microsoft Front Page and Macromedia Dreamweaver produce different HTML code that may create unexpected results under varied browsing environments.

Use an external HTML validator to verify your code will be parsed the way you intended

6. Create accessible Web sites
Allow all users, including those with disabilities, access to your site by following consistent guidelines; ensuring that your documents have alt tags for images and scalable fonts is a good start towards making your pages more useable for everyone.

Review the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from the W3C

Human Factors has 10 usability tips

7. Effective use of fonts, images and colors
Graphics, colors and logos are all important to personalizing your page. However, misuse can drive away visitors. For example, a font you interpret as "fun" (e.g. Comic Sans) may be viewed as immature to a visitor. Below are some quick tips to follow regarding these issues:

• Use a sans-serif font such as Verdana or Arial for displaying text, as these fonts are easier to read on a monitor. Serif fonts, such as Times New Roman and Georgia fonts look best on printed material

• Avoid use of italics; blocks of italicized text are difficult to read on a monitor

• Optimize any graphics; large images may take a long time to download for a visitor using a dial-up modem; use a thumbnail image instead

• Animated GIF's are not cute; pixilated, moving graphics were popular in 1996, but have lost much of their appeal on today's Web sites

• Keep the font and style consistent by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). View this table to get started

• Create a color palette and use it consistently; depending on the mood of your page, an upbeat, bright selection of colors may be appropriate

Refer to the Wheel of Color for basics and recommendations

Saila.com has resources and tips on using CSS

Web Page Design for Designers contains extensive information on all aspects of Web design including fonts and image creation

Corbis provides high quality photos and graphics

8. Write succinctly
• Read The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White
• Omit needless words
• Define acronyms
• Check your spelling

Refer to this free online dictionary and thesaurus

9. Promote your site
Ensure each page contains relevant keywords, a brief, accurate description in the head of your HTML document, is titled appropriately, and sponsoring or related organizations provide links to your site. The more links to your Web site from other pages results in a higher ranking on some search engines.

Atomz.com provides a free search engine for smaller Web sites
Submit your site to Google

10. Verify and credit sources of information
Give credit where credit is due; plagiarizing copy, design or images without prior permission is unethical. Be sure to acknowledge and verify credibility of all sources. While it is not technically impossible to steal code, or articles off the Web, it does not lend credibility to your own organization.

Verifying and Citing the Internet

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