Good Website Design Checklist

If you have been a web browser for any length of time, you have seen all types of websites that are ugly and usable. Here is a checklist of what to consider and include when building a new website.

First Impression Counts

Site designed for primarily for the visitor
Home page designed to solve a particular problem for the visitor, not a pithy "we are great because" section (save this for the about page)
Easy for the visitor to understand what your company is about
Well defined home page focal point - what is the first thing you want your visitor to focus on when the load the home page
Pleasant/simple looking home page - cluttered home pages leave the visitor with an impression that your business is unprofessional and disorganized
Pages take too long to load - if your web page takes more than a couple seconds to load that visitor is hitting the back button
Quick scan navigation - if your visitor must read your home page before knowing where to find the information they are looking for, their gone. People don't read the web, they scan the web
Design elements (ie., navigational menu, ...) are where they are expected to be
Element unnecessary design elements (ie., flash pages, animations, too much text, too many pictures, ...) - if it doesn't solve a visitors problem, get rid of it
Website works when javascript is disabled and frames are not supported
Text based navigation links - stay away from the flash and javascript menus
Don't have "Welcome to ..." on your home page
Don't have a splash page for your home page
Title tags are meaningful - title tag such as home, untitled, index, new document are meaningless to the visitor
Don't have an audio or video file automatically play when the page loads
Check your pages in all the major browsers for compatibility
Important content and call to action are "above the fold"
Don't use home page pop-ups or pop-unders
Don't force your visitor to install weird plug-ins to make the site functional
Provide clear instruction next to your call to action

Navigation

Use simple, text based link navigation menus
Provide breadcrumb navigation so the user knows where they are and how to get back to a previous page
Don't use sideways navigation
Use link shortcuts on the home page to the most important information
Put navigational menus at the top center, top left, or top right of every page
Use a consistent site navigation menu across the whole website
Divide your website into clear categories and subcategories
Clearly label your navigational text to set the visitor's expectation when they click the link
Don't make the user horizontally scroll to get to the navaigational menus
Use the same size and color text for all navigational links
Keep all pages less than three clicks away from the home page

Text and Links

Don't mix and match text sizes and colors
Use standard fonts
Follow normal capitalization rules
Stay away from scrolling, blinking, fading, or moving text
Your site has the proper color and contrast scheme
Use centered text only on headlines
Don't use justified text
Don't use browser specific or proprietary tags
Don't use moving Javascript text in the status bar
Don't use underlined text - leave underlined text for links only
Use proper link text color schemes - hover and visited links are different color than non-visited links
Links must be clearly labeled or distinquishable from non-linked text
Don't use too many links on one page - try to keep the link count per page to less than 10 (excluding navigational menu links)
Keep link (anchor) text to less than 5 words
Check regularly for "dead" links
Use website specific 404 pages

Content

Know what content is popular on your website and make it easily accessable
Organize your content based on visitor (not organizational) needs
Divide content into logical and consist categories
Have engaging, relevant, accurate, fair, and impartial content
Identify non-html documents (ie., pdf, powerpoint, word, excel, ...)
Write web specific content - don't copy and paste printed or other media content onto your website
Keep pages short - if you need more than 500 words for a topic then divide it into multiple pages. Browers typically skim webpages until they find what they need
Constantly add new content to your website to keep visitors returning again and again
Stay away from offensive, politically incorrect, and racial content
Proofread content for spelling, grammar, and capitalization errors
Bury the "mission statement" pages into the about section - don't need links from your home page to this content
Don't post company sensitive information onto your website - everything published webpage is publically disclosed information, whether your mean it to be or not
Don't link to "under construction" sections until that section is ready for public viewing
Make sure your website has privacy and terms of use pages
Don't use word or powerpoint to generate your sites content

Graphics, Video, Audio

Use a professional designed logo
Website logo should not be a scan business card
Website logo should be at the top of the every page and link back to the home page
Seperate banner ads from graphics - people tend to ignore banner ads so they'll ignore your graphics as well
Only use quality graphics - stay away from cheap clip art
Use divider bars with great care
Use small file size graphic - try to keep each image to less than 20kB
Don't automatically load movies - have the user click the video to play
Don't use trailing cursors
Don't use large images and resize them with the img tag height and width parameters
Don't use graphical text - graphics are graphics and text is text
Stay away from animated gifs, 3D graphics, gradient images, beveled images, and image shadows
Use alt tags with all images
Use a pleasant color scheme - stay away from all red or black background sites
Don't use image maps
Don't use graphics that suffer from the "halo effect"