How to Make a User Friendly Web Site

When you start designing your page, you should think about what kind of content you want for the page. If you have a lot of content for the page, you will need to make the site fit the content. It should never be the other way around. A lot of text and a small text area, for example, is a bad idea. People do not like to scroll. Remember that you do not make the page for you, but the visitor. If you want visitors, make a layout that fits the content.

You should also think about the fact that people will leave your site very fast if they find a reason to. If you can't make your site interesting, people will leave.

It's even worse if your site is annoying or if it is irritating people. A lot of colors, a lot of pop up windows or things like that will make sure people are likely to leave. If they think they can find something they're looking for at your site but fail to find it easily, they're also likely to leave very fast.

This brings me to how to organize page content. I have tried many different menus. What I have realized (and numbers back this up), is that menus on the side of the page are often neglected, especially if you have both a top menu and a left menu. People are more likely to "see" the content if you have a top menu. Furthermore, if you do choose to have a left menu, there is a good chance that people won't read more than the top of it. Don't make it too long.

Part of the reason for this may be that people start at the top of the page. We're used to doing this when we read. We also read left to right (well, most of us at least), and we do that at web pages too. The consequence (once again backed up by numbers) is that people will tend to focus on some columns. If you see a web site with several columns, you will tend to focus on the most content rich one.

For example, looking at the New York Times web site, it is almost guaranteed that the central cell under the main headline is getting by far most attention by users. The menu, furthermore, is perhaps a decent example of a left menu, but people will not read through it the same way they would if it was drop down menus. The right cells are getting very little attention.

This has implications for advertising too. If you want to make money from your site, you will need to know where to place the ads. If you have texts of some sort, one very good place to put ads is immediately after the text. After the reader has finished reading your text, he or she may not be sure what to do, and may end up clicking the ads. Those are possibly the best.

Ads in between text can also be good, but do not confuse your reader. If you do that, they will leave your site. Ads on the right or left side, however, are not very good. By experience, ads that will "steal" some attention are better suited for the right side of a page than text links. People are a little bit more likely to look at the left side, so you may place links there. Ads at the very top of your page are not great either.

I hope this little piece has helped some webmasters. It is difficult to offer good advice, but one worth noting is that it's better to keep it simple, fast and classy than huge, slow and too much.

The rest is all about content. Without that no one will visit you.