Managing a Good Website Do’s and Don’ts
By Wendy Ng, ITSCWeb Administrator Meeting
Managing a Good Website Do’s and Don’ts
By Wendy Ng, ITSC
Web Administrator Meeting
Good navigation design
Make visitors get around your site quickly and easily
Good navigation design
(DON’T) Complex/confuse navigation
Avoid meaningless/unrelated element confuse visitors
Annoying/complex navigation design
(DON’T) Many links in home page
Create primary navigation and secondary navigation
Group related links
(DON’T) Image buttons without explanations
Use ALT attribute in the tag
e.g.
Good navigation design
(DO) Provide sufficient navigation buttons in your website
Consistent navigation style
Visitors can easily go forward and backward within the site
Good content design
Improve accessibility on your website
Good content design
(DON’T) Page length too long, display too much materials in one page
Split the content smartly, make page length no longer than 2-3 screens
Make the page has “theme”, only concentrated on ONE detailed topic
(DON’T) Visitors can’t figure out what the site about in few seconds
Visitors need to guess whether they enter the right site
Visitors coming from search engine will leave immediately
Good content design
(DON’T) Avoid complicated frames
Hard to bookmark
Hard to navigate and print content
Include “” message in web page
e.g. Your browser don’t support Frame.
(DON’T) Avoid using popup windows
Information may be blocked by popups filter
Use Dynamic HTML for popup
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Good content design
(DON’T) Avoid overuse of JavaScript
Most JavaScript waste computer resource
Most visitors only want to get the information they want, incorrect use will cause visitors feel annoying
(DON’T) Aware of using Template design
Not compatible for all browsers (especially FrontPage Template)
Good content design
(DO) Include corporate or business identity
Add CU logo with link
Link to Department home page
Provide contact information, copyright notice and update notice
(DO) Place important information near the top
Easy for visitors to find the information
(DO) Add page encoding (especially for Chinese pages)
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Good use of text & formatting
Make professional look
on your website
Good use of text and formatting
(DON’T) Use image or other method that make the font can’t select
Search engine/visitors can’t grab your content
Text in image format can’t resize on high resolution screen
(DON’T) Scrolling text or marquees
Visitors will feel annoying by the lines of running text
(DON’T) Poor color contrast between background and text
Use dark against light
Test the page in a monochrome screen or a black & white printer
Good use of text and formatting
(DO) Use type safe font and suitable font size
Make sure that your fonts are available on most visitors’ computers
Avoid a too large font that SHOUTS & a too small font that is hard to read
(DO) Use web style sheets
Cascading Style Sheet, CSS
Good use of text and formatting
(DO) Make your website printable
Make a “printable” version of every page in your site
Avoid text cut-off at right margin when printing
Can’t print all content in a frame
(DO) Test on different web browsers
Try out your site on different browsers and different versions of browsers
Good use of graphics and multimedia elements
Improve attractability on your website
Good use of graphics and multimedia elements
(DON’T) Avoid blinking and flicking features
Abuse in using animated gif
Busy background that hurt eye
Avoid rectangular background of an image
Don't resize images by just changing the size tags
(DON’T) Avoid overuse of Flash animation
Provide alternate entry points to skip the flash animation
e.g. use “SKIP” button
Meaningless introduction movie that waste visitor’s time
Good use of graphics and multimedia elements
(DO) Use JPEG and GIF properly
JPEG for big image, or photo with more than 256 colors
GIF for transparent, animation, interlace, solid block of colors, or image with few colors
(DO) Use web safe palette
Make sure all monitors and browsers have the same color in viewing
Web safe color = 216 colors
Good use of graphics and multimedia elements
(DO) Optimized images/files
Too many images increase loading time
Reduce photo resolution (graphics in 72 dpi is enough for web)
Reuse your graphics images
Let visitors know the file size before download
Compress file size in PowerPoint presentations
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