Case Study - Building a Usable Site

Applying The Lessons

These are a few of the specifics I found to have the most impact on my visitors' ability to find and view the information I was trying to make available to them:

Correct Tag Syntax

This a necessity, not an option; in some browsers, a missing quote mark or closing tag can prevent the entire page's contents from appearing. This is easily done by opening the files in Arachnophilia or a similar HTML editing utility.

I like Arachnophilia for two reasons: ethically, because it's careware, not shareware; and practically, because it will highlight markup tags and tag errors, making it simple, easy, and quick to spot and fix mistakes.

Clear Alt Tags

A descriptive alt tag must be present for all images that have anything to do with your content (though you don't need to label transparent image spacers and such). Filling in the alt tags may sound like picking nits to you, but it can make a huge difference to a lot of people — and depending on who your target audience is, that could be more people than you might guess.

In my case, I knew roughly half my target audience (people who keep pet birds) were middle-aged or more, and that many others were likely to have slow dial-up connections. This meant a significant percentage of my Web traffic could be using text or other alternative browsers, or might have images turned off to speed download times.

I knew from hands-on experience that another group of visitors would include handicapped people. Canaries are fairly easy to care for, and their song is wonderfully lifting to the spirits, making them a favourite pet of people who can't care for a cat or dog for whatever reason.

Proper Use of Colour

Using colours that work well together is not only a good idea, but should be considered essential. We've all seen them—those Web pages that feature colour combinations that send chills up your spine. If you're like me, you can't get away from such a site fast enough! Remember, too, that up to 10% of the general population has red-green colour blindness. These people have trouble differentiating between these colours, so don't try to contrast red and green — it might not be noticed.

In my opinion the Web-safe color charts are indispensable for correctly formatting pages to display similarly on different systems. Of course, you could just stick to black and white — but that's incredibly unattractive, and sets people's teeth on edge too; so in a way, not using colour can be as detrimental to your end results as the incorrect use of colour.

Test and test and test again, until you find colour combinations that work well together, and are easy to view for everybody.

Optimize Images

If there's one rule on Web page accessibility that webmasters seem to love to break, it's image size. If you can't get the detail you like in a file size that will download in 15 seconds or less for a person using a 28.8 k modem, then either use a smaller image, or find something with a smaller file size to use instead. A resolution higher than 96 d.p.i. (dots per inch) is wasted on the Web, and usually images can be 'optimized' (that is, their file size reduced) without affecting their appearance much when viewed by a normal Web browser.

Many graphics programs have built-in optimizer utilities, or you can use one of the many free services such as the one at www.spinwave.com.

Save the high-resolution stuff for your local machine — be kind to your visitors, and always optimize the pictures you post on your Website.

Readable Fonts

Always specify alternate fonts, especially if you want to use a fancy font as your primary! If the person viewing your Webpage does not have that font on their machine, and you haven't specified alternate fonts, they will not be able to read your message. List two or three commonly found fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, or Helvetica as your alternates — better your page be readable, if not quite so pretty, than gorgeous but blank of text!

In the same vein, use the fancier fonts to accent plainer text, not to replace it. Eyestrain is already a large enough factor in many Web surfers' lives, and they will not thank you if you add to it.

Fixed-Pixel Table Widths Vs Percentages

Until all the various *ML standards settle down and choose their common ground, tables will remain the best way to control your page layouts. Setting tables to percentage widths rather than fixed-pixel widths allows them to expand or shrink to fit the viewer's screen as needed.

After a while, you begin to get a feel for what you can do with this, and realize it's not as limited as you first thought. It's possible, with a little experimentation, to design pages that will view similarly in a low-resolution Web TV screen, or a high-resolution screen set at 1024 x 768 pixels or more. And yes, it's still possible to keep the content interesting.

Link Varieties

One of the most important details of all is to provide multiple means for visitors to navigate your site. I've heard over and over again from Webmasters with a wide variety of background experiences that this is redundant and unnecessary. What they forget to include in their statement, is that it's not necessary for them.

Examine that statement a little more closely, and you have the reason multiple links are so useful: your Website is not for you, but for your visitors! Different people think differently, and it is only polite to attempt to accommodate your visitors in the way that they are the most comfortable with.

Put it this way, if you prefer: some people will notice and click on text links, while others will look for and spot the graphic link every time. People used to using one kind of link will look for it and may miss other types of links. But if you make both types of links available, everybody will be able to get around easily, without having to think twice about it.

Stay In Touch

An oft-forgotten detail in the maintenance of a good relationship with your site visitors is to keep them up to date on breaking news in your field, along with Website events and updates. Probably the easiest way to do this is to start an email list.

You have two basic choices — you can begin a newsletter (also known as an Announcement List), or you can establish a more interactive list (called a Discussion List). This second type of list allows members to post questions to the entire list, so that every member gets a copy and can answer (or not) publicly (on-list) or privately (off-list), as they prefer.

Announcement lists are far easier to manage, but are less interactive, while discussion lists are a lot more work to maintain and oversee, and can be troublesome if a 'flame' session occurs (which, sooner or later, they always do).

Personally, I took a chapter from Chris Pirillo's book, "Poor Richard's Email Publishing" and started an ezine. 'Flock Talk' will be ending its second year at the end of August, and is currently growing at an average rate of over 7 new subscribers a day, with an unsubscribe rate of less than .5%. This may not sound like much—but it's better than average for a Web zine, and those numbers can add up fast!

One thing that's essential to remember if you're going to commit yourself to publishing, online or off, is this: if you set a schedule, it's imperative that you keep it! Delays of a few hours will sometimes be unavoidable, but delays of a day or more are unacceptable and must not be allowed to occur. If you allow them to, you will find that your reputation for reliability will begin to slide in a hurry. Remember: bad news travels ten times faster than good news!