Don't make the visitor have to think about what to select when they visit
your site.
Your site should be:
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Easy to navigate
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Proper labels for items to select
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Well organized
What about Fry Steel's Menu.
Think about how you did searching for patents. Do you feel that the Patent
Office's search engine is user friendly?
Try and make your site self evident as possible.
The average user doesn't read instructions on a site, or carefully examine
the overall content. They just glance and want to quickly see what they want.
People are in a hurry.
The web has lots of standard navigational schemes that as a beginning web
designer you should stick too. Such as a horizontal or vertical navigational
bar. Why go and mess with perfection. You are free to design any kind of navigational
scheme you wish. However, if it's something the visitor is not familiar with,
they may give up and leave.
People don't care how things work, as long as it gets the job done. If they
like your site and can get the information they need easily, they will return.
Create a hierarchy of the items on your site.
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The more important the item, the more prominently it should be displayed.
Such as bolder, larger, offset, near the top, etc. Make it stand out.
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Visually organize the things that are related on your site on your site.
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Nest visually items to show what's connected to what.
Humans are very good at scanning a page for what we want.
Divide the page up into areas that allow to easily and quickly find the parts
they are looking for.
Such as a computer store
Wide sites: many categories to select from at each level and requires few
clicks
Deep site: less categories at each level to select and requires many clicks.
Typically a user doesn't want to click more than 3 levels. The speed at which
to site downloads also is a factor.
Make a page more concise. Think almost like you are paying per word in an
advertisement. Try and word your site so you get you point across in the simplest
form possible.
This helps the visitor scan your page quicker.
Copyrighting your software or web site is as simple say saying: Copyright
© year by name. All rights reserved.
However this doesn't proof much. If you are ever challenged you won't likely
win. If you register your copyright with the copyright
office, then you can proof that you really copyrighted it.
Fair Use - This
allows copyrighted works to be used without payments in certain situations.
Such as if you are doing a movie review, you are allowed to use a clip of the
film. If you teach a class and need to copy a portion of a book. These can be
used without infringing on a patent.
Public Domain is material with no copyright and can be used without the authors
permission.
Sites to look at:
Placing your files on the web:
Virtual Ave
Tripod
Geocities
Dot Easy
Good domain names. Non confusing.
netsol.com
FTP Software
Organizing files. Images, Folders, etc.