When the stream becomes a river….

Increasingly people are discovering that putting together a basic web page is incredibly simple. It’s easy to take your information, drop it into a template and tweak. But when people come around to launching their sites and requesting critiques I think there are a couple of things that may speed up this process and allow them to get and give better feedback.

1. Check your spelling and grammar – if you KNOW you are a bad speller, or have a less than perfect grasp of English, ask the person (or list) to point out spelling mistakes. Don’t become discouraged, and do NOT scream dyslexia. No customer is going to care if your site is riddled with mistakes because you’re dyslexic, all they will see is that you can’t use a spell and grammar checker. (STILL ask someone to beta read it – spelling and grammar checkers won’t pick up word substitution on a regular basis (threw for through or but for tub).
2. Ensure that your design IS easy on the eye – its an easy one – don’t use clashing colours on a regular basis and make sure your text is legible.
   Block bolding, italicising or placing text on a hard to read background will lead to visitors leaving in disgust.
3. Make sure your navigation is neat, in the same place and uncomplicated.
   Sounds an easy one, but its amazing how many sites can’t keep a consistent navigation. If you’ve got more information than will fit on your navigation system, consider hiring someone to program a DHTML or a css based navigation, or consider condensing your navigation into the overall section and then adding navigation for its subsections.
4. NO MUSIC. I can’t emphasise this enough. Never EVER have music, or speech running automatically on load. Yes, some people love this sort of thing – I’ve never met a serious designer yet that does. If you’re going to look professional, emulate professional. Sites with ‘cutesy’ midi playing are a complete NO NO!
5. Get rid of excess movement – something I really hate when going onto a site is seeing a barrage of motion – banners, buttons, flashing text. In moderation ads of any kind are a great way to monetise your sites, but too many are more off-putting than any other of the mistakes mentioned above.
6. As is hosting on an obviously free site. Take yourself and your business seriously and get a proper host, or people WILL tell you how unprofessional it looks.
7. Finally, not actually to do with your own site, but if you’re asking for a critique, critique other peoples sites too – its not only common courtesy, but it makes you feel far more approachable. And don’t ‘complain’ or ask people to ‘be gentle’ – its very unfair to put your site in the limelight then tell people, effectively, that you only want to hear good things.
   

Critiquing is never permission to tear someone apart – no one should ever consider critiquing a way to take their frustrations out on anyone else – but at the same time, by its nature critiquing is brutal. Remember that people have feelings too, and the quickest way to turn people off trying to help is the impression that you may be offended or can really offend with your own opinions.

DK Wilson (http://ardentwriter.com) is a web designer, writer and advocate for well designed, intelligently thought out Work at home parent sites. She works closely with the WAHP communities she’s involved with and is always willing to lend a hand whenever necessary. Not above using templates herself, she enjoys learning new and interesting ‘tricks’ with html and CSS to create gorgeous sites from scratch or on modification.

This article is available from: Ardent Writer - Critiquing a site

Visit D Kai Wilson's book site at Books By Kai

Tagged as critting, dos and don'ts, help, tips and tricks, websites + Categorized as All, All/tech