2. Tell me what's changed!
Nothing is more annoying than a site that doesn't tell you if it's changed. Sure it's great when you first come to a site's homepage and it's all new, but what happens once you've got those repeat visitors? If they come to the front page and it's the same, they'll often assume nothing has changed deeper in the site.
So if you change something deeper into your site, make sure it shows at the main entry point. A “recently added” section or “news”. Anything to stop the punter leaving as soon as they arrive. In fact, just making sure you date content amendments in general is a godsend, so I'm not taking as read an article from 1997 that was never followed up on.
3. Tell me what you do!
When the user comes to your site I have a task in mind. Let them know if you're the site to help them with it. Don't be afraid of stating the obvious, if you're too enigmatic in stating what your site is there to do, then why should the user care about it?
Many sites let you know what they're about with a tag line. EBay is “The world's online marketplace”, and this leaves you in no doubt as to what it's there for. By contrast if your company is Mung and Beetch Inc could do anything and a bit of clarification will help you users. Are they lawyers or caterers? What service can you provide?
4. Not just rich media!
Not everybody is browsing at full screen on a huge monitor with Flash, Images turned on and Javascript enabled. It would be nice if people could use your site even if they didn't have these things. Sure you site can look good with everything turned on, but working without it is helpful too. For a start you'll attract customers who simply can't use those technologies (and that's more than you'd think), but also search engines will find it easier to index your content and you definitely want them.
5. Where am I?
If I come into a web page I could have come from a link on any other site to any part of yours. That's the nature of hypertext. I might arrive with no idea where I am, so let me know straight away. A breadcrumb trail navigation:
Home >> big Category >> this page
is a great way of letting me know how this page fits into your site as a whole, and if other pages further up may actually meet my needs better.
6. Who are these guys?
Make sure you put a (metaphorical) face to your organisation. If you can get the impression of people on your site then it makes a surprising difference, real people – unsurprisingly - respond well to other real people. This can be part of the tone of the site's text or the interactivity you make available, or even just the subtle use of people in imagery.
Similarly an address or phone number, even in the email ages, gives confidence in the fact that you're a real business not a fly-by-night.
7. Spade or Digging implement?
Don't get caught by using obscure internal descriptions when your site is externally facing. You and your boss may know what a Mark IV Reconbobulator is, but your site's visitors may not. Name your categories and navigation elements based on who your target audience is.
It helps to organise your items by more than one category, so that they can be found in multiple ways. Make and Model might be fine for a battery, but it is helpful to class your items by form and function for other items.
8. “That box that lets me type and get pages I want”
Users like to search. It saves time, and means they don't have to interact with your more complex or confusing navigation. They type what they want and get instant access to the info they need. Adding a search facility is a great method for adding raw usability, but also tracking what people are searching your site for can give you clues as to which bits of your navigation aren't working properly.
Of course a bad search doesn't do you any favours either. So make sure your search returns useful results. Be wary of just searching in description text. Sometimes a description will miss key elements of what an item is. “Fine example of wedgewood” won't tell you it's a jug, for example. Use metadata like keywords as part of your search algorithm to cover the information about an item that's not part of their description..
9. Easy to remember addresses
Mysite.com/pagelib.php?cat=4&area=2&id=12x3456789 is not very memorable. It's a collection of data that's handy to the web server, but nigh unreadable to a normal person. Using urls with real words in like Mysite.com/paint/blue/200ml.htm is much better. As a user I might remember it next time I'm thinking of where to buy my 200ml of blue paint.
A man of many talents, Matt has been a web designer, technical editor, and jewellery picker. He is currently on contract for the Birmingham City University, producing pages for research centres.