- Good design offers a clean, fresh look
- Pages download quickly
- First page and home page fit into a standard screen (640 x 460)
- Important material on other pages fits into the same 640 x 460 screen
- Graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) help to break up large areas of text
- Every web page in the site looks like it belongs to the same site
Navigation
- Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
- A large site has an index or a site map
- Frames, if used at all, don’t get in the way
- Navigation appears consistently and with a consistent look
- Links to contact e-mail or e-mail forms are part of site navigation
- All pages have links to get you back to where you started
Links
- Link colours coordinate with page colours
- Links are underlined so they are instantly clear
- Links are clear where they are and what page they’re going to
Text
- Background does not interrupt or dominate the text
- Text body type is easy to read
- The most important information is up front
- Columns of text are narrower than in a book to make reading easier on the screen
Graphics
- Buttons are clear but don’t dominate
- Graphics enhance but don’t distract
- Graphic links have a matching text link
- Animated graphics turn off by themselves
- Graphic elements repeat from page to page for the sake of a unified appearance and faster downloading
- Graphic tags use height and width attributes to speed downloading