Seven Golden Rules for World Wide Web Page Design

1. Decide on your criteria for success

• Make sure you know why you want to be on the WWW

• Success means different things for different sites.

2. Decide who you want to impress

• You can’t please everybody

• Defining your audicence makes design decisions easier.

3. Let the information drive the design

• Design the site structure around the information

• Prioritize information

• Establish user interest

• Graphics should support the information design

4. Make it easy to see what’s there and how to get to it

• Make your site structure explicit

• Tell users where they are

• Provide a home

5. Don’t expect your WWW pages to be just like your paper publications

• Branding is more thatn a logo

• Exploit the medium and add value

• Reading from the screen is hard

6. Use graphics with care

• Hire a professional graphic designer

• Make sure your designer understands the medium

• Apply your graphic style throughout your service

6. Use graphics with care (continue)

• Graphics can be boring

• Less can be more

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• If in doubt, leave graphics out

• Test your graphics on different browsers

7. Keep your users interested

• Monitor and maintain your site

• Provide genuine content

• Use other media to generate interest in your site

• Get users involved