ABSTRACT
Creating a Web page takes time and
effort, but make it short and simple.
Judy Bogdanets
MFC 215
WEB PAGE DESIGN
The Key to a Successful Web Page
Judy Bogdanets
MFC 215 - Online
December 10, 2015
Steve Krug makes a lot of great points in his book, Don’t Make Me Think, A Common
Sense Approach to Web Usability. Clearly when I’m searching the Web, I don’t want to actually
have to search through the entire page to find what I’m looking for. Like Krug says “Don’t make
me think”. Web pages should be user friendly and straight to the point. Users shouldn’t have to
give too much thought on how or where to navigate. The less thinking the better. Pages shouldn’t
be too “busy” looking, it could be confusing to the user. As Krug states, “We don’t read pages.
We scan them”. Scanning pages is exactly what I do, if the page doesn’t interest me, I move on
and find a different website. The appearance of the Web page should be clear. Important
information should be larger, bolder, highlighted, different color text or font, or anything that
makes that important information stick out. Try to make it obvious when subjects are clickable,
but don’t make the user have to click through 50 pages before they get to what they want. I
would never let it get to 50, for me after 3 or 4 clicks and I don’t get to what I’m looking for, I’m
done and on to another website.
I for one, get bored easily or lose focus when it comes to too much reading. I can’t
understand or even begin to understand what I’m reading sometimes, it’s just a bunch of noise
that I don’t want or need. In chapter 5, Omit Needless Words, Krug said getting rid of all those
words that no one is going to read has many benefits. It reduces the noise level of the page, it
makes the useful content more prominent, and it make the pages shorter, allowing users to see
more of each page at a glance without scrolling. This is true in so many ways. When navigating
through a Web page, you should make information easily accessible. Having a search bar where
you can enter what you’re looking for is also very helpful. The layout of the page should have
categories that you can click and maybe even some sub-categories. If you can’t find what you’re
looking for, then that’s when the search bar would come in handy. Giving users common sense
Judy Bogdanets
MFC 215 - Online
December 10, 2015
options, I believe, is the key to a successful Web page. I love having choices of where I can go,
what I can see, and/or what I can do. I use the Sort and Filter options whenever I can, especially
when I’m shopping online.
A Web page takes time and dedication to create and you want it to be good and
interesting. Testing your Web page with a few different users will help you determine whether
it’s good or you will need to change some things that would make it better. I think building a
Web page can be very stressful and complicated, but the end result is satisfying to me. Now
when I search the World Wide Web, I will be looking for specific things that I’ve probably never
even gave a single thought to before reading this book.