CategoryWeb Design

April 23, 2009 — When designing a website, the most important thing is to make it as usable and convenient as possible. On a website on which users could possibly get confused, it is best to include help elements. Help elements come in all different shapes and sizes: an entire page, a suggestion box or a quick tip. But they all have one thing in common: besides doing the obvious (i.e. helping the user), help elements provide an extra convenience that brings the website closer to that sought-after usability. With the number of forms, search functions and other navigational elements on websites these days, using them can occasionally become confusing for some users. Providing help elements in as many places as possible can be a great way to make the user’s experience more pleasurable. The better the experience of the user, the more likely the user will buy your product, come back to the website and fulfill the goal that the website was built to achieve. Below is a compilation of best practices for help elements, an explanation of when to use them and a showcase of excellent help elements. You may also be interested in the following related posts: * 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design * 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design * 12 Useful Techniques For Good Interface Design * 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques Read more…

April 7, 2009 — Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world. Read more…

April 6, 2009 — There are an extensive amount of roads you can take in web design, specifically in navigation. Here, we will talk about one specific navigation technique, tab-based navigation. If properly carried out, tabbed navigation can be very clean and organized within a web layout. [Links checked February/10/2017] So what is tabbed navigation? Well, it is essentially a set of buttons most often set horizontally. Tabs generally follow numerous different styling guidelines. First, a tab set usually is attached to or slightly protrudes from a container, like in the example below. Also, notice how the open tab matches the background color of the container, and the other buttons are darker. This is another common styling guideline. When you look at tabbed navigations, you will also notice many styling trends. First, many tabs will have rounded corners on buttons. This helps to create a clean look. Also helping to make a clean look is the use of separation between buttons. Most designs use space to separate buttons, but a bevel, single line, or background color contrast will also look nicely. Read more…

April 4, 2009 — We recently showcased beautiful websites from the fashion industry, and in response to reader requests, we’ll do the same thing here for sports websites. This article showcases the most beautiful website designs from the North American sports industry, including ones for news, teams and leagues, sports apparel and more. As in any industry, sports websites have their own trends, as you will see below. However, because the websites showcased here fall into a number of different categories and serve different purposes, not all of the trends we discuss will be relevant or applicable to all types of sports websites. Read more…

April 2, 2009 — Complex design techniques are often time-consuming and, well, complex. Some of these advanced effects can add plenty of depth to designs, but when used in the wrong place, they do little more than distract viewers from the project’s intended focus. These effects may be precisely what a design needs to have the impact it requires, but even in these cases, they should be complemented by simpler effects. Simple effects and techniques are the building blocks of today’s designs. For example, what good is a stellar lighting technique if you can’t decide which colors to use or which text-based effects to use in conjunction with the effect? With a “less is more” mentality, we’ve selected 10 very simple and impressive design techniques that can drastically improve the performance and appearance of your designs. For more techniques, you may want to look at our previous articles: * 12 Useful Techniques For Good User Interface Design * Grid-Based Design: Six Creative Column Techniques Read more…

March 31, 2009 — Web design has come a long way since its beginning, especially in terms of styling. Take a look at a website from 10 years ago and compare it to one from today. The differences are enormous. One of the major changes you will notice is the background. Today, backgrounds are one of the core features that determine how visually interesting a website is. The background holds the theme of the website, and there are a vast amount of possibilities when designing a website background. This article goes over the best practices and popular trends of backgrounds in the current stage of innovative Web design. You may also be interested in the following related posts: * Web Design Trends For 2009 * Mobile Web Design Trends For 2009 Read more…

March 25, 2009 — In this article, we take a closer look at the nature of drop-down navigation menus and analyze situations in which they should or should not be used. Read more…

March 17, 2009 —

Editor’s Note: An updated collection of user experience research on breadcrumbs is available in Vitaly Friedman’s article, “Designing Effective Breadcrumbs Navigation”.

On websites that have a lot of pages, breadcrumb navigation can greatly enhance the way users find their way around. In terms of usability, breadcrumbs reduce the number of actions a website visitor needs to take.

March 12, 2009 — From a web designer’s perspective, it can be very interesting to look at the top websites from a particular industry to see how they relate to their target audience, the different approaches that are used, and how they compare to websites in other industries. Read more…

March 3, 2009 — Why use icons? Design is all about communication: it doesn’t matter how important or exciting the information that you’re sharing is if you fail to hook your visitors. When initially viewing a website, most users will first scan the page for visually interesting content, and only after something grabs their attention will they actually begin reading. Icons are a simple, effective way to draw users into the content of your website. Read more…