Online web site builder, website software, homepage creator, personal ecommerce

Jakob Nielsen is considered the expert of Web usability, and has been publishing guidelines to help improve website design for about ten years.

“All design considerations should be settled according to the needs of the user.”

Remember, just as the customer is always right, what the website user wants is more important than what the website owner likes.

Avoid using “leading edge” Web technology, graphics requiring downloads, and excessive animation.

Just because you have a fancy, powerful computer, it doesn't mean your customer does. And most customers won't stay on a site if they have to download new software just to read what it says.
Write your site for the Web. Use short sentences, bulleted lists, and leave a lot of white space when you layout your Web pages.

Reading off a computer screen is about 25% slower than reading from a paper, and most of your customers don't want to read anyway – they want to scan. If you want your customers to spend a few minutes on your site, make it easy for them to scan your pages.
Use standard menu labels.

Standard menu labels include: Home, Contact Us, About, Catalog, and Photo Gallery. People know what sort of information they can find on those pages.

You could get creative with your menu labels and instead call them: Home Plate, Hit a Home Run, Team, It's Yours, and Worth a Thousand. Some of your customers would probably think it was a great idea. A lot of others would be confused.
Put a headline on each page that clearly identifies what the user can find there.

This goes back to writing for the Web and making your pages easy to scan. Your customers will appreciate knowing exactly what they can find on each page without having to scroll around and look. The faster and easier you can make the time they spend on your website, the happier they will be.
Use the same design and color scheme of each page on your website.

There's a reason why the big corporate sites have a consistent look throughout the entire website: Your customers want to know where they are.

By keeping the color scheme, header, footer, and button styles consistent throughout your entire website, your customers won't think they've accidentally hit a link that took them away from your site. If your Home Page is blue, your Photo Album is pink, and your Catalog is yellow, you will confuse - and possibly lose - your customers.

Your customers expect seamless transitions between your pages, so give them that.
Test each page on your website to be sure it loads in less than 2 seconds.

Waiting for a slow-loading website is almost as bad as having to download software before you can read it.

A slow-loading site will frustrate and annoy your customers, and they'll probably leave before it finishes loading. They might even think the site is broken, and stop coming back.

Test your site. If certain pages do download slowly, there are ways to fix that, or to give your customers a warning that the download might take a few seconds because it contains a large file. Whenever possible though, keep it quick.

Your customers' time is valuable too.

CityMax website templates and features are designed with customer expectations and laws of usability in mind.

For more of Jakob Nielsen's tips, check out his website at http://www.useit.com . Click here to sign up for a Free Trial from CityMax today.