A mistake often made by people who are new to web design is
thinking that they shouldn't pay any attention to what has come
before: they're going to design a website the way they think one
should work. You have to realise, though, that there's a
difference between being innovative and being arrogant. In
almost all cases, you should be sticking to the conventions that
have gradually developed during the life of the web so far.
There are Millions of Websites
Why would you need to do that? Well, if there were only a few
hundred websites in the world, you wouldn't - it'd be fine for
people to have to learn a slightly different way of working to
use yours. Unfortunately for you, though, there are literally
millions of other websites. Even your most loyal visitor is
overwhelmingly likely to be spending the majority of their time
looking at other websites, not yours - and if your website
doesn't work similarly to the others, then they're going to find
your website hard to use.
The Learning Curve
When people come to your website, do you really want them to
have to figure out how to use it before they can get started? Do
you want to write big help files and FAQs just to explain it to
them? Of course not. Part of the power of the web (as opposed to
desktop programs, for example) is that it gives a consistent
interface to all sorts of things. If you break this, then you're
making your site require some learning to be usable.
The web is competitive enough that, in most cases, your visitors
will just desert you for your easier to use competitor - even if
there isn't one now, one can easily enough spring up and take
advantage of the niche you created with your bad design.
What are the Conventions?
The web's design conventions are simple, but effective, to the
point that you probably don't realise they're there most of the
time. Here are some examples:
Your logo should be a link to your homepage. The links on your
navigation bar should all be internal links. Clicking a small
picture will display a bigger version. Links go to HTML
documents unless they're clearly marked as a movie, PDF, etc.
Things are bought by adding them to a 'cart' and then going
through a 'checkout'. Identity checks are done with a username
and password system.
There are many, many more
What Happens When You Break Them?
People get annoyed. It's immensely frustrating to want to see a
bigger version of a picture on an e-commerce website and click
it, only to get the same size picture in a new window or
something equally stupid - annoying enough that I, at least,
would go and look for a site that had a better picture.
Not only do people get annoyed, though, but they also get
confused. If you put an external link on your navigation bar,
for example, then people could think it's part of your website -
that creates all sorts of issues, since you have no control over
external content.
Exceptional Circumstances
The only time you should break the web's conventions is when
your website is different enough to others that it will be worth
people learning a better way to use it. For example, when Google
launched Gmail, the world's first webmail service with a
gigabyte of storage space, they introduced an interface that
used Javascript to change entire pages without reloading. That
broke the web's conventions, but worked well enough that the
technique caught on, and is now starting to develop new
conventions all of its own.
Don't get carried away, though, and start thinking you're more
important than you really are. Your great new product is very
unlikely to justify you adding streaming video to your homepage
- it's more likely to just annoy people (far better to add a
large picture of the video and a 'click here to see our new
product' headline). Know your website's limits - for the most
part, you should try to make it work as much like other websites
as you possibly can.
The ultimate test is this: if you sit an experienced web user in
front of your site, can they use it without getting confused? If
they can't, then it's back to the drawing board.
About the author:
Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain
Services
Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.
