Getting your website right - uses and misuses of web design patterns

The importance of a well designed website is absolutely crucial to future business, particularly when online is used as a channel for sales. With Internet penetration in the UK at over 65 per cent and over 86 per cent of these connections through broadband (source: Office for National Statistics), your website's often the first port of call for any prospective customers looking for information about your company.

This article looks at the pitfalls of website design patterns and how companies can use them successfully to aid website design, helping to ensure an online proposition that's as effective as possible.

Conclusion

The risks of inappropriate use of UI design patterns are clearer than the advantages. Like any form of generalised guidance it's important that the limits and scope of design patterns are taken into account when deciding whether to make use of them or not.

UI design patterns, when taken out of a particular context of use or problem domain, may be useless without further adaptation and testing.

In the instances where you decide that it is appropriate put UI patterns into practice, you must ensure that you understand the context in which the pattern was conceived and its suitability for the proposed use. Without this you will not realise the potential of patterns to allow you to focus on more business critical design.

This article was written by Nathan Langley. Nathan's crazy about user experience - so crazy that he works for Webcredible, an industry leading user experience consultancy, helping to make the Internet a better place for everyone. He's very good at user interface design and extremely talented at information architecture.