Reaching the Internet Majority
Good website design will appeal to the majority of internet users.
The Average Internet User
There was a time that the average internet user was 35 year old male with a college education. There are still many resources on the internet that will tell you this.
Today's research tells us that there is no average surfer. People of all ages, economic classes, educational backgrounds and occupations traverse the internet on a regular basis.
No matter who they are, web surfers are impatient and in a hurry.
Therefore, web pages should be constructed in such a way that they load quickly and information is easy to find and quickly scanned.
Most web surfers will not wait for fancy graphics or slow loading pages. A few seconds and they're gone.
Page size should be kept to a minimum. (500 words or less). Optimize your pictures to load quickly!!
Keeping Up with Trends
The internet and the equipment and software used to access it has changed so much and so fast in the last 10 years, it is hard to keep up.
Just a short time ago web designers had to design web pages that performed as well on dial up as they did on DSL high speed connections.
Monitor resolutions were also constrictive when it can to setting the width of a web page.
One of the best ways that I have found to keep up with the ever changing internet is by using Google Analytics. And it's FREE! I've paid hundreds of dollars for tracking software that doesn't do what this free software does.
Sign up for a free Google account. As soon as you publish your website, open a Google Analytics account for the domain. Add a little javascript to the bottom of each page. Add that same javascript each time you add a new web page and you'll be able to track every visitor that comes to your website.
Here are some results after using Google Analytics for just a few days on our main website.
Web Browsers
A majority of internet users are accessing the web with Internet Explorer and the Firefox browsers.
Monitor Resolution
The days of limiting your web page width to 800 pixels is over. The majority of viewing monitors are now set to a resloution width of over 1000 pixels. Less than 4% will have to scroll to the right if you exceed the 800 pixel width.
You also need to consider the width of your large images if you want pages to display properly at lower resolutions. We purposely made them too wide on this page to show you the result when viewing at a 1024 resolution width.
Java Enabled
Over 90% of internet surfers now have Java enabled on their browsers.
Summary
Design fast loading pages that perform the same in Internet Explorer and Firefox Mozilla browsers.
