My Rumination: Web Design Best Practices :Rules Of Smart And Successful Web-Designing

"Design Best Practices :Rules Of Smart And Successful Web-Designing"is my personal pick of the main ideas and concepts, which might improve the quality and popularity of your web-sites and provide a good foundation for successful development in the future.

Page Layout

Appealing to target audience
Consistent site header/logo
Consistent navigation area
Informative page title that includes the company/organization/site name
Page footer area — copyright, last update, contact e-mail address
Good use of basic design principles: repetition, contrast, proximity, and alignment
Displays without horizontal scrolling at 1024x768 and higher resolutions
Balance of text/graphics/white space on page
Good contrast between text and background
Home page has compelling, interesting information above the fold (before scrolling down) at 1024x768
Home page downloads within 10 seconds on dial-up connection

Navigation

Main navigation links are clearly and consistently labeled
Navigation is easy to use for target audience
All navigation hyperlinks "work" — are not broken
Navigation is structured in an unordered list (accessibility)
Navigation aids, such as site map, skip navigation link, or breadcrumbs are used (accessibility)

Color, Graphics and Multimedia

Use of different colors in page backgrounds/text is limited to a maximum of three or four colors plus neutrals
Color is used consistently
Graphics are optimized and do not significantly slow download
Each graphic used serves a clear purpose
Image tags use the alt attribute to configure alternate text to display if the browser or user agent does not support images (accessibility)
Animated images do not distract from the site and either do not repeat or only repeat a few times
Each audio/video/Flash file used serves a clear purpose
Download times for audio or video files are indicated
Links to downloads for media plug-ins are provided
Captions are provided for each audio or video file used (accessibility)

Content

Common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman are used
Avoids the use of "Click here" when writing text for hyperlinks
If standard link colors are not used, hyperlinks use a consistent set of colors to indicate visited/nonvisited status
If graphics and/or media is used to convey meaning, the alternate text equivalent of the content is provided (accessibility)
Information is easy to find (minimal clicks)
Timeliness: The date of the last revision and/or copyright date is accurate
Content does not include outdated material
Content is free of typographical and grammatical errors
Content provides links to other useful sites

Functionality