Even during the search for innovative ways to make their websites work, new designers should follow established design conventions. These conventions have evolved with the Internet, and users expect web pages to function in a certain way.
If only there were a few websites, visitors can expect designers to spend time learning to navigate their sites. There are millions of web pages, however, and if visitors do not see what they have come to expect, you will find the site difficult to use and simply go elsewhere. Designers can lose significant amounts of traffic if you do not adhere to the design conventions that have already been imposed on the websites. And no design really want to spend time in the writing of large files only help or FAQ to explain the use of a site. The web is a competitive place, and most of the time, visitors simply leave a site instead of trying to work through bad design.
The conventions of website design are simple, but effective. To follow this convention, designers must ensure that their logos act as links to the main page, that clicking on a thumb display a larger version of that image, all links lead to HTML documents unless are clearly labeled as some other format (PDS, movies, etc.), the items are acquired through their inclusion in a virtual shopping cart and then taken through a virtual checkout process. Check website identity always be achieved through a system based on user names and passwords. These are just some of the conventions. There are many others.
If a website does not follow these rules and conventions, visitors are upset, frustrated and confused. People will leave a website in an instant if they are made to work very hard to navigate.
There are situations in which the conventions of common web page layout can be ignored. One of these situations is that if a site is so unique that it offers is worth the time to learn and use. When Google introduced its Gmail product, the mail service for the first time in the world that provide one gigabyte of storage space, an interface that uses JavaScript to change the entire page without reloading them was included. This was a departure from the convention site, but the site worked so well that it became popular despite his departure from conventional design. The site is now beginning to create new conventions themselves.
Designers must not start to believe they are more important than they really are. The introduction of a new product or service does not mean that designers can get away with the addition of streaming video on a page without annoying people, for example. Designers are advised to recognize the limits of their websites and work to make them as similar to other web sites as possible in terms of design and navigation.
Topic: Design Conventions: A Good Idea? (Read 1091 times)
