IDAHO WEB DESIGN SERVICES

Studies have shown that the typical web surfer will decide within 4 seconds if they will stay at the site they are at, or move on. If it is difficult to figure out how to navigate through your site or to understand what the site is about, many of your site visitors will move on. In this article, Idaho Web Design Service will focus on effective Web site Usability and what you should avoid on your web site.

Avoid Bad Site Navigation
     - Make sure that the main links through the site are clearly visible. If the links are hidden from view for some artistic or other effect, you should have a good reason for doing so, because you will likely lose a good number of visitors when they can't find the navigation buttons.

     - Idaho Web Design Service suggests that you don't make assumptions about how visitors will use your site. Site navigation should consist of more than forward and back arrow buttons. Many people will enter your site from a page other than the main page because of search engine results listing these other pages. If your site has 10 pages all of which are only linked to each other through a series of arrows and a visitor enters your site on page 5, how do they know how to get back to the main page? They may start clicking the back arrow, but they won't know if your site has 10 or 100 pages, or if they are towards the end or the beginning. Most people are not likely to click the arrow more than a few times, if they don't find what they are looking for in that amount of time they will leave. Many people may only look at a little bit of your site now, bookmark it, and then come back later to read more. If they left off on the 8th page of your site, they need to be able to navigate directly to that page, and not have to click the forward arrow 8 times. Don't count on them using the back button on their browser either, some may not even know it is there, and even if they do they are likely to not want to click it a dozen times to get back to a previous page.

Let the Visitor Retain Control Over Their Browser
     - It is not a good idea to have a site designed that will cause the browser window to automatically open up to a size that fills the entire monitor. Most people have their browser windows open to the size they want, and will not appreciate you forcing your preferences on them.
     - The status bar at the bottom of Internet Explorer shows useful information that many people refer to while surfing the web. If a site has other messages displayed there, it takes away the visitors choice to see the other information about the sites they are viewing.

Use of Underlined Words
     - Avoid underlining words or phrases that are not links. Since by default all text links are underlined, visitors may get confused when they see text that is underlined and assume that it is a link. They may even think that the link is broken.

Splash Screens
Splash screens are pages with very little content that may appear when you first visit a site. They commonly contain either Flash animation or messages about what browser is r