Pack a Mail Blog

Archive for the ‘Web Design’ Category

I dislike password restrictions. Passwords may be a necessarily evil, but they’re more repulsive when a perfectly reasonable key is rejected.

We’ve all seen “errors” such as:

• your password is too short
• your password must contain letters and numbers only
• your password must be between 8 and 10 characters,
• use letters with at least one in uppercase, and have between one and four numbers.
• Please close your eyes, face north and recite Shakespeare while typing it. (well, perhaps not this one…..!)

Then, after you’ve spent 3 hours devising a reasonable password which adheres to the rules, you’re forced to change it again 7 days later.

I can understand banks and Government departments don’t want novices choosing “password” as their secret key, but are users so naive? (OK, don’t answer that.) Actually, “password” could be a reasonable option: do hackers bother trying it? One of the best passwords I ever defined had zero characters — no one ever attempted to enter nothing!

Does your Twitter client, photo gallery or blog comments form really require a password restriction? There are a number of issues with the approach:

1. It’s an irritation for users — especially those who understand the security implications.
2. Strict rules provide hackers with a template — they know not to bother trying passwords which are less than 8 characters, more than 12, have no numbers, etc.
3. The rules make passwords far more difficult to remember — especially if you’re forced to change them regularly. Many users will simply write it down on a post-it note and stick it to their screen.
4. If you specify what constitutes a “good” password, does it mean you’re partly responsible when a user’s account is compromised?

In my opinion, users should be allowed to choose whatever password they want. You can show a warning message when an easily-broken password is entered but, if they want the letter ‘p’, why not let them use it?

If you can’t trust users to enter a decent password, don’t let them choose one: create a random string and post it to them via email or snail mail.

Do you use password restrictions on your system? Has it been more or less successful than no restrictions whatsoever?

Many businesses are moving their web sites toward CMS platforms so they can quickly serve up fresh content on a regular basis. This is a great way to keep visitors and search engine spiders coming back. But it’s not a solution to ineffective copy, especially on static pages of your site. And even CMS sites have static pages – About, Services, Contact, etc. – with content that can quickly get stale or simply stop functioning when they should be getting site visitors to act.

Perhaps you just threw those core pages together, your stats show the pages aren’t converting well, or you’re just long overdue for a revamp. The good news is that freshening up your web copy doesn’t have to take long to do and can have a noticeable impact. Here are a few updates to consider.

Update Your Bio

If you’ve recently won an award, presented at a conference or completed a training program, you should work it into your bio. But you don’t need a major change in your credentials to revisit the copy here. Does the page quickly sum up the highlights of your background and experience, show a little of your personality and make it easy for visitors to “get you?” If not, reworking this page is a great idea.

Add a Social Element

If you have a LinkedIn account, Facebook fan page, Twitter account or blog that you use for business, your site should have easily identifiable links or icons found throughout your site. If you tweet primarily business-oriented content, you may even want to incorporate your Twitter feed right into your site.

Change Up Formatting

It’s amazing what a visual facelift can do for your copy’s readability and interest factor. If you have solid paragraphs of copy, try adding bullets and subheadings to break it up and make it easier to read. Even something as simple as changing your link styles (color, decoration, etc.), can make visitors more willing to click around.

Cut It In Half

Paragraph after paragraph of text is rarely effective. It’s just too much information that your visitors probably don’t care about or don’t have time to read through. If changing up the formatting doesn’t help on its own, take a good long look at your copy and ask yourself if you really need that much. There is probably a shorter and more direct way to get the point across.

Repeat Your Call to Action

You want your site visitors to do something; you wouldn’t have a web site if you didn’t. That call to action needs to be placed on every page where it’s relevant. Do you want them to schedule a call, email you for your rates, opt-in to your list? Tell them that, and don’t be afraid to repeat it.

When is the last time you took a close look at your core pages? Do you think a freshening up is in your future?

Tables are our friends in Website Design! They allow us to show large amounts of information in a small space, but when designing tables for print or the web there are a number of guidelines you should keep in mind. The main aim when creating a table of data is to make it easy to digest what otherwise could be a large chunk of textual information. It’s the designer’s job to choose suitable backgrounds, borders, typography and images that go into a table to make it eye-catching and informative.

1. Breathing Space. Make sure the data in the table cell has some padding around it so that the information is easy to read.

Big Cartel

2. Typography. Generally it’s a good idea to avoid script and decorative typefaces and instead choose clean, legible serif or sans-serif fonts.

Fluxiom

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All too often, we worry about unique visitors, overlooking the important metric that is visitor engagement. Not only will these simple tips make a real and quantifiable impact on your site traffic, but they should also help to retain the visitors that you’ve worked so hard to get on your site.

Find the problematic pages

When you’ve an established presence, it becomes more and more important to start to analyse your content and the ways in which people interact with it. With social media being such a powerhorse for traffic, interaction and engagement are fast becoming the new backlink, and knowing how people are reacting, can help you maximise the impact your content is having.

Doing so can help to open up a couple of opportunities, and even provide ideas for fresh content. Find your popular content, re-read, and expand upon it to make it even better.

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I expect to receive some flak for this article as it attacks fellow web designers and developers.

However, it’s time to provide a list of typical mistakes made by new web developers — but we were all novices at one time. Some

points may also apply to that antagonistic co-developer who refuses to accept any notion that their code isn’t perfect……

1. Ignoring web standards Web standards were invented for a reason: they help you create device-independent web sites and applications. Few people want to learn them, not everyone likes them and most developers will disagree with some aspects — but ignore them at your peril!

A novice developer will make typical mistakes such as:

• forgetting or using inappropriate DOCTYPEs. I still don’t understand why so many developers use a transitional DOCTYPE — do they really want to add font tags and background attributes?
• using old-school HTML such as table layouts and center elements
• not appreciating the subtleties of inline or block elements, e.g. putting h2 headings inside a span
• not validating their code. Or worse, using a validator then ignoring the results and arguing that validators are inherently flawed.

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