Five Ways to Make Your Website User-Friendly
Your blog’s design is the book cover for your writing. You may be a brilliant blogger, the best in all of internet land, but you are scaring off potential loyal subjects if your template is visually overpowering, difficult to navigate or just takes too darn long to load.
Here are five things you can do to help make your blog user friendly.
Get rid of the music
There are a lot of music lovers in the world. That doesn’t mean they want Queen screaming “Another one bites the dust” out of their monitor when they visit your website. If you must have music on your blog, at least be courteous and install a way for your visitors to turn the music off. Otherwise your site traffic may become nothing more than a one hit wonder.
Use common sense navigation
Put the navigational menu in a place that is repeated throughout the entire website such as the header, sidebar or footer. Keep it simple and avoid using symbolic images or obscure wording to indicate the different sections of your website. You want your visitors to enjoy your website not spend their time there trying to decipher code.
Use vision friendly color schemes and font-sizes
Chances are good that a portion of your visitors will be struggling with vision deficiencies. Extreme color combinations (such as yellow text on black background), low contrast (such as dark grey on black background) and a small font size will only acerbate the issue. The most eye friendly color schemes are dark text on light backgrounds such as black on white or dark brown on cream. Use Access Keys to make sure the color of your text has sufficient contrast from the background. When sizing text, try not to go below 14 pixels as anything smaller will become impossible to read on high resolution screens. You should also consider sizing your text in ems or percentages rather than pixels as the previous two can be resized in all browsers using the browser’s control panel.
Make your pages printer friendly
Some of your visitors will think your articles are so good that they will want to print them out to show other people. More often than not, though, instead of getting a nicely formatted page of text, the printer shoots out a hot mess consisting of six fragmented pages of text and graphics. Do yourself and your visitors a favor by creating a cascading style-sheet that will make your web pages play nice with the printer. Visit Eric Meyer’s article, “Print Different” to learn how to do that.
Make sure it works in all browsers
Although Internet Explorer still dominates the web browser market, there are others, such as Firefox and Safari, with a growing user base that shouldn’t be ignored. Building a site that is not dependent on a specific browser to work really is not that hard and is well worth the effort.
Visit myBrandme.com for many other great tips on how to develop your website for success.
About the Author: Freelance writer and designer, Arwen Taylor is the owner of myBrandme Website Development Solutions. myBrandme offers writing and design services to help you successfully grow and maintain your website. From installation support to design to content creation, myBrandme has a solution for every stage of your website’s development.
Wishing you Success,
Designing Mom
Topics: Accessibility, Beginners, Web Design, Tips | No Comments »
Job Alert! Programmer / Web Developer
Job Title: Programmer / Web Developer
Company: Back2Front - The Web Site People
Position Type: Permanent
Skills: Programming, Web Developement, Graphic Design w/ Photoshop, Marketing & Public Speaking
Back2Front is continually on the lookout for part-time work-from-home applicants to help with web development and maintenance work, content editing, and design. This job is ideal for stay-at-home parents, or anyone wanting to avoid the daily commute, as the hours are very flexible, and you only need a computer with an Internet connection to be able to work from home.
Visit back2front.ca/060~Contact_Us/015~Employment/ for more information and to get a sense of the company’s vision and values.
Requirements:
• Your written English skills must be immaculate: Spelling, grammar, punctuation, structure, flow, organization, formatting, style, consistency, etc.
• You must have demonstrable expertise in at least one of the following areas:
o Programming / Web Development
o Graphic Design with Photoshop
o Marketing and Public Speaking
• Some technical web development background knowledge is needed: HTML, CSS, browsers, editing software, client/server model, FTP, email.
• Additional related skills are an asset. We will certainly want to take advantage of any additional skills or interests you have: Perl, Flash, Javascript, Linux, search engines, research, customer support…
• The make-or-break attributes of any successful candidate are:
o Attention to detail
o Independence
o Responsiveness
Compensation:
• You will be providing service as an independent contractor, on your own schedule, with your own equipment. You will be invoicing Back2Front for hours worked and marketing expenses (if applicable) twice a month (15th and 31st).
• Number of hours worked depends on your availability, skill-set range, available work, and perhaps most importantly: your performance. High quality, high performance individuals work as much (or as little) as they want to.
• Starting rate through training and probation period is $11/hour. The rate will increase commensurate with performance.
Please note, we are currently only accepting applicants in the GTA.
To apply, please submit your resume and cover letter to: info@back2front.ca
Wishing you Success,
Designing Mom
Topics: Job Opportunities | No Comments »
Why is Website Accessibility Important?
By Reina S Brown
Website accessibility is a topic that is seldom even considered when businesses publish their sites to the web. This is due to the simple fact that there is a vast misconception that people who are blind or handicap do not use the computer or the internet. Some are ignorant enough to believe that they have no use for such technology and that they must stick to primitive things. However, you’ll be very shocked to know that there are many people in these categories who do use their computers and access the web for all the same reasons everyone else in the world does. Let’s take a deep look into why website accessibility is important and why it should NOT be overlooked.
Tim Berners-Lee, Director of World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3C,and inventor of the World Wide Web made the importance of website accessibility known as he stated, “The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.” He invented the web with everyone in mind. His intentions were not to exclude anyone but to allow everyone to have total access.
The Internet has since become a major part of our lives. We use it to pay our bills, talk to our friends, share pictures and experiences, get information, do vital research, get the daily news, and shop just to name a few. This is all done from the comfort and convenience of our own homes. Sadly though, there are still a large number of sites that exclude people with various disabilities when making their design forcing them to take the old-fashion, long and drawn out course that we once took before we relied so heavily on the Internet. Does this seem fair? Why no! It is so unfair that it isn’t even funny!
Because there are many handicap people who do not drive, having the freedom to exercise the conveniences of the Internet would actually make life much easier. Without having to wait on someone to drive them around: or, without having to rely on others for various reasons, they could feel more independent as they could take full control over when they can have what they want and need, as well as to how things are done. Not to mention, they can have all the information that they want or need at their fingertips to give them empowerment.
There are many businesses, such as Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Newegg, and Godaddy.com that exist only in cyberspace. They have no storefronts to visit. If their services are not accessible, then there is a large population of people that are not being reached. Thus, they are missing out on much opportunity to acquire more wealth
To protect people belonging to such groups, and to ensure that they can have the same access to such services as everyone else, laws have been established and standards have been set to ensure that websites are accessible. In the United States, each state has set forth its own laws and standards regarding website accessibility. What’s more, world wide organizations have been created to set up laws and monitor the usability of websites on an international scale to protect all handicap groups world wide. Each country also has its own policies. Because of this, it is important to make sure your site is in line with these standards, especially if you are a business that is serving the needs of the public.
What to Do?
For starters, it would be a good idea to consult with a company that will help you to make your site more user friendly. Such companies will give you simple solutions that will not only enable you to reach out to a much vaster pool of clientele; you’ll also be in compliance with accessibility laws and standards.
Making your site accessible rarely calls for an entire overhaul of the design. In most cases, very simple steps can be taken, such as adding alt text to images and to graphical links, changing the color contrast between links and text, adding navigational links, and creating clickable links for mouse overs. There is really nothing to it. These companies will give you all the necessary advice you need and walk you through every step of the way. It is a small price to pay, and it really does pay off. Plus, those who are blind and handicap will greatly appreciate it.
Why not take these steps today? You can’t afford not to.
About the Author: Reina S. Brown is the owner of Waldorf PC. At Waldorf PC, Our knowledgeable and friendly support representatives provide 24/7 service. We are never closed. We save you money and productivity, using our innovative strategy of proactive computer maintenance and quick tech support.
We are located on the web at http://www.waldorfpc.com
Wishing you Success,
Designing Mom
Topics: Accessibility, Web Design, Tips, Articles | No Comments »