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The Internet is buzzing with the unofficial, official announcement from Google that they are planning to launching a new browser called Chrome.

The browser has been rumored for a very long time, and on the surface sounds like a great idea, but do we really need another web browser?

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Web design is a creative art. We’ve all experienced situations where we’ve been wowed by a site with an exceptionally creativity design or functionality. However, we’ve also had frustrating experiences with sites that try too hard to buck the trends and wound up being very unusable. In web design and development, creativity and innovation need to be able to work in harmony with usability, not restrict it.

As a designer there’s always that desire to step outside the box and create something truly unique. However, there’s a fine line between positive creativity that will enhance a website and negative creativity that will complicate usability and confuse visitors.

Blending Creativity and Predictability

In my opinion a website doesn’t need to be creative (in terms of design and functionality) in order to be successful. One of the most obvious examples is Craigslist. The idea behind the site and what it accomplishes for visitors are far more important than the look of the site, however, a high-quality design can certainly help.

Those websites that do display creativity and innovation also need to find a way to incorporate predictability for users. Your website’s visitors are going to be impatient, so it’s critical to not make them think or work any harder than necessary if you want them to stick around and take any action.

The predictability is not so much an issue with the design itself, rather with the use of the site. But a design can help or hinder the predictability in a number of ways.

Areas Where Predictability is Important:

Shopping Carts

E-commerce sites have a very strong need to be predictable in terms of how easy or difficult it is for customers to buy products. Most shopping cart systems are fairly standard and straightforward, which means online shoppers are used to them, and anything that works differently could be confusing.

Many e-commerce sites go to great lengths to analyze how many shopping carts with potential purchases have been abandoned and at what stage in the process. This type of information can sometimes help them to improve sales by making the overall buying process easier for visitors.

Forms

Contact forms or any other type of form where a visitor is inputting information can be damaged by unnecessary creativity. While most websites try to make it as easy as possible to contact them, some make the process more difficult by trying to improve the standard in one way or another.

Logins

If your website uses accounts and logins, visitors should easily know where they should go and how they can get logged in.

Navigation

Navigation is one of the most critical elements to building a website because visitors are simply helpless if they can’t maneuver through the site to find what they want. Navigation menus and bars also offer an opportunity for designers to add some visual appeal to the design with different colors and rollover effects. However, when the appearance and creativity of navigation interferes with predictability, usability will suffer.

Most websites have a fairly standard navigational structure that visitors expect when they arrive at a new site. Creativity with the navigation should still allow for the designer to address the needs of visitors in terms of predictability.

Alternate Navigation

In addition to standard navigational menus and contextual navigation, most visitors will look for things like a sitewide search, a sitemap, or a FAQ page if they can’t find what they want. Having these as a part of your website can make things easier for your visitors.

Subscriptions

Whether you are building an opt-in mailing list for a newsletter or looking for new blog subscribers, predictability is important here too. For this reason, you’ll see most blogs have a standard RSS icon and subscription links somewhere that is easily seen as soon as visitors arrive at the site. Those who frequently visit blogs will look in the standard locations when they want to subscribe.

Standard Pages

Most websites will include a few pages that visitors typically look for, such as an About page, a Contact page, a Services page for a service-related business, etc. When building your website consider the pages that your visitors will be looking for, and be sure that you have at least the basics covered.

Layout

Particularly with blogs, visitors are used to a certain type of layout. Some creativity when creating the layout is positive, but too much can make it difficult to offer visitors the predictability that will help them to use the site. If you’re looking to stand out a bit more, there are ways to do so without sacrificing usability. Many blogs are using large, artistic background images to give the site a unique appearance while still being built on a fairly typical layout.

Areas Where Added Creativity is Acceptable

There are a few situations where visitors will expect more creativity, and as a result you may be able to get away with pushing the boundaries more than you could with other types of websites.

Creative Services

Web designers, photographers and other providers of creative services can take some additional liberties with their own websites. Typically, a more creative website will show your visitors what you’re capable of, and that may have a significant positive impact that can overcome any hindrances to usability.

Media

Websites of bands, movies and tv shows tend to be pretty creative and feature design elements that might not be appropriate on a corporate website. Visitors expect to be entertained at these sites, so the creativity is usually welcomed.

What’s Your Opinion?

How do you feel about the need to be creative in comparison with the need for predictability?

When it comes to first-time visitors of your website, they will be forming an opinion very quickly and that opinion can have a serious impact on the success of your website. Regardless of what you are attempting to accomplish with your site, you need to have an idea of what you want to accomplish with first-time visitors in order to be able to develop a site that will make it happen.

In the past I’ve about 21 factors that influence first impressions, but knowing what you want to accomplish with those first impressions is a slightly different topic. By knowing what factors influence first impressions and by knowing what you want to happen with that first visit, you’ll be able to put that knowledge into practice to create a site that leads visitors to react in a certain way.

Some Examples of Potential Goals for First-Time Visitors

Product Sales

Selling a product on a first visit is difficult to do, but it can be accomplished. Many websites that are set up to achieve this goal are obvious sales pages. In this case, there is really no option to do anything but purchase the product or leave the page. There are usually no links to any other pages and no information that isn’t directed towards making a sale. This is the ultimate example of attempting to create a specific reaction from first-time visitors.

Most sales page sites are set up to sell one specific product. An e-commerce site on the other hand will have hundreds or thousands of different products, so the approach will obviously be a bit different. For an e-commerce site most sales will come from visitors who have been on the site several times.

Subscriptions

Most blogs have a goal of maximizing RSS subscriptions from first time visitors. For this reason you’ll see the commonly-recognized RSS icons usually high on pages where they will be seen right away. You’ll also see many blogs that use an introductory message before or after a post to encourage more subscriptions.

Blogs aren’t the only example here. Email opt-in lists are pretty similar. If your site is set up primarily to build a large opt-in list, your form that allows visitors to sign up will be one of the first things visitors see when they enter the page.

Bookmarks

Converting a first-time visitor into a repeat visitor is a goal for most websites. One effective way of doing this is by encouraging visitors to bookmark your page. If they do, chances are they will be back at least once at some point in the future. I put this approach into practice at my own blog. At the end of each post there’s a link to bookmark with Delicious. While this link isn’t given a spot high on the page that is seen right away, it is located at the end of the post so anyone who reads through to the end will see it. If they’ve read or scanned the post they’re a good candidate for a bookmark.

Contact Forms/Inquiries

Another potential goal for first time visitors is to get a lead or an inquiry. If this is the case, a contact form will be a focal point of the site and it will be easy to access. You may even see a contact form right on the homepage or in the sidebar of every page.

Ad Clicks

Some websites and blogs are set up primarily to make money though AdSense clicks, or some other type of cost-per-click program. Developing one of these sites requires that ad placement be carefully selected and tested. Ads will typically get prime screen real estate and there will usually be less external links that could distract visitors from the goal at hand.

For these sites there really is no other goal than getting an ad click from your first-time visitors. The success of the site will be determined by the number of visitors and the rate at which they click on ads, so that’s what gets priority in the design and development.

Memorable Visits

Maybe your goal for first-time visitors is to leave them with an impression that will lead them to remember your site and return at a later time. You may go about this be provided a lot of quality information, or by having a game or something entertaining on the site. In order for the first-time visitor to be able to return easily in the future, they’ll need to remember your URL. Branding plays a big role in achieving this goal.

Social Media Votes

A common goal for blogs is to get votes at various social media sites from first-time visitors (and from repeat visitors as well). Several months ago I would occasionally use a Digg button for specific blog posts on my blog for this reason. The hope was that visitors would like what they saw on the page and the button would remind them to vote and make it easy. In some cases it worked well and landed posts on the front page, and it other cases it didn’t.

Tell a Friend

If your first-time visitors aren’t going to buy anything for themselves, maybe they’ll have a friend that they think will be interested. This is not going to be your number 1 priority for your visitors, but can be something that you’ll want to consider.

How This Impacts Your Design

Obviously, if you want visitors to react in a certain way, you’ll also want to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. If you have several different things that you want to accomplish from first-time visits (such as subscribers, bookmarks, and memorable visits), you’ll need to develop a site that will allow all to be accomplished and to work together for greater success.

If you have on goal that trumps all others (such as is the case with sales letter pages), you’ll want to design a page that makes that one goal very obvious to visitors and gives them few distractions of doing anything else.

If you have multiple goals for first-time visitors, they should complement each other, not hinder one another. For example, if your primary goal is to sell products, you’re not going to want to also have a goal of getting ad clicks from first time visitors. In this scenario the ad clicks would prevent you from making sales because the visitor has left your page.

What’s Your Experience?

How do you incorporate your goals for first-time visitors into your designs?

If you’re not interested in your website’s visitors, here are 7 things you can do to make this clear to them.

1. Provide Them with No Way to Contact You

Some of your visitors may want to contact you to ask a question, make a suggestion, or just to send a comment your way. If your site offers no way for them to contact you, you’re telling them that their feedback isn’t significant. Most websites will provide a simple contact for or an email address to allow visitors to write to them, and most businesses will provide a phone number on their website. Giving your contact information will help visitors to feel that you are trustworthy and legitimate.

2. Give a Poor Description of Your Products and Services

Your website is your opportunity to provide visitors with the features and benefits of your products and services, and to let them know why they should choose you. If visitors have to search around the site to try to find complete information, or if the description of your products and services is inadequate, your website will not be effective.

3. Don’t Follow Up on Their Comments and Inquiries

When visitors leave comments on your website/blog or when they email you, a response is needed in most cases. If hey are expecting or hoping for follow up, they will feel that you don’t value their feedback if you do not respond in some way.

4. Use Pop Ups and/or Pop Unders

Pop ups and pop unders are two of the most annoying things on the internet. Fortunately, many browsers now offer options for blocking them, however, they can still be annoying to visitors. Yes, pop ups and pop unders can be effective for some people in the right circumstances, but today most internet users are going to ignore them and they will do more harm than good. If you are considering using them, be sure that you are weighing the pros and cons and be aware of the message that they can send to visitors.

5. Use Contextual Ads

Contextual ads (linked within the text of a page) are generally considered to be annoying by most visitors, including me. They typically will convert pretty poorly, which means you won’t make much money with them, and they will turn off a lot of visitors.

6. Display Excessive of Flashy Advertisements

Many websites and blogs earn money through advertisements, and it has become generally accepted by most internet users. However, if the advertisements are excessive they will change from being accepted to being annoying. By plastering ads in every conceivable location you will be sending a message to your visitors that you place more importance if making a little bit more money than you do in satisfying your visitors. If you want visitors to feel that they are your number one priority, keep ads to a reasonable limit.

In addition to the amount of advertisements that you use, the type of ads you use is also important. Many banner ads can be distracting to your visitors. Ideally, banner ads should be still, or at least involve only minimal movement. Flashy banners that quickly change colors or show a lot of moving text or objects can be extremely distracting, and visitors will wind up leaving.

7. Don’t Provide Them with an Accessible Website

Nothing shows visitors that you don’t care about them like not even allowing them to use your site. Have you ever visited a site that told you to upgrade or install something in order to be able to use the site? I think we all have. These websites present a serious negative message to visitors that don’t fit into a specific box.

What’s Your Opinion?

What would you add to this list? As a designer, what do you try to prevent sending the wrong message to visitors? As a visitor, what shows you that a website owner doesn’t value you?

Navigation is one of the most important elements of website usability. A good navigational structure can make visits much more pleasant for your users, and poor navigational structure can cause them to leave in frustration. Of course, accessibility should be the first concern for navigation so that everyone can use the site, and these 5 steps can help to make your navigation much more effective.

1. Check for Dead Links

Dead links can be very frustrating for visitors and they can also hurt search engine rankings if they are excessive. In effort to help your visitors have a more positive experience while on your site, you should check for dead links every now and then. From time-to-time pages will be moved or sites will go down permanently, leaving dead links behind.

Dead-Links.com is a free online tool that can help you to identify broken links on your website. Simply enter the URL of your website and it will crawl through your site and list any dead links that it finds. Google Webmaster Tools also will help you with identifying dead links. Once you are logged in, check under crawl errors and you may see some pages that the Googlebot was not able to find.

2. Use a Sitemap

Sitemaps can be very helpful to visitors that are lost or looking for something specific, plus they give you some added internal links that can help with search engine rankings. I’m referring to HTML sitemaps as opposed to XML sitemaps, although both are important.

If your website is too large to manually create a sitemap, there are several different tools that can help you to automatically build one. Site Map Pro is downloadable software that will do the job. There’s also a tool from FreeFind and shareware Sitemap Generator 1.8. For WordPress users the Sitemap Generator plugin from Dagon Design is a great choice.

3. Build an Effective FAQ

Most websites under-value the internal linking potential of a frequently asked questions page. As you are creating your FAQ page, look for opportunities to link back to other pages on your site that give more information on the questions that are being listed. You can also create questions specifically to give you an opportunity to answer a question by linking to another page. Even if it is not really that “frequently” asked, it can still help for internal linking purposes.

Try to think of questions that searchers would use when trying to find a website like yours. If you can include the same, or a very similar, question on your FAQ there is a chance that you will show up in good position on the SERPs.

4. Add a Site-Wide Search

Especially if your website is fairly large, some users will prefer to search for something specific rather than clicking through endless pages. I know I frequently use searches on blogs to find an old post that I want to re-visit.

WordPress users have a search function already built in, so there is really no reason not to include one. For other websites, Google Custom Search is one of the best options. You can even earn money from AdSense when searchers click on the ads.

5. Add More Internal Links

Internal links within the text of a page can be helpful for visitors as well as helping with search engine rankings. Internal linking is pretty easy on a smaller site, but it becomes more difficult on larger sites and those that are updated frequently, such as blogs. With new content being published regularly, there are always new opportunities for adding internal links from older posts if you want to take the time to go back and add them. As you are creating new pages and blog posts, look for opportunities to link to other pages whenever possible.

Redesigning a website can be a huge project. In most cases, a complete redesign means starting from the ground up, which can be every bit as time consuming as designing a brand new website. The other option is to make smaller changes to update and upgrade the design rather than starting from scratch. Which is best for you?

Factors to Consider:

How old is the current design?

The age of the current design may be a factor that will sway you one way or another. Most sites tend to make fairly major changes every year or two to keep things fresh and interesting for visitors. If your site has remained largely the same for several years you may want to just go ahead with a complete redesign. On the other hand, if the current design was done fairly recently, you may want to make only minor updates. Not only will frequent redesigns cost more money, but they can also have negative effects if the visitors are not receiving a consistent message.

What quality is the design?

An obvious factor that should be considered is the quality of the current design and the potential quality of a redesign. A redesigned site should always be a step up in quality in some way. You’re not going to want to change from a high quality design to one that is not as good. Can a redesign improve the site, or are you better off with what you have now?

In what condition is the code?

If you are planning to avoid a complete redesign by making some minor changes, even this can be a nightmare if the existing code is a mess. In this case, you’ll be better off starting over and creating clean code that will be easier to maintain. Table-based design is a good example of this. Even minor changes can be extremely difficult or even impossible without reconstructing the whole layout. CSS-based designs are of course much more flexible.

What effect will it have on branding?

Ideally, your website will play a large role in the branding of you business and in developing a particular image of your business in the eyes of your visitors. Does your current design do an effective job of contributing to the branding of your business? Will a complete redesign allow you to improve the branding, or will it have negative impacts by making changes. The ultimate purpose of a website is not to look good, but rather to benefit the business and provide visitors will a valuable experience on the site. Sometimes even a better design will not be able to do these things more effectively.

What other factors, such as the business’s image, have changed since the last design?

Businesses are always evolving. Has the business experienced major changes in products and services, a logo change, a slogan change, color scheme changes, etc. that are now longer accurately reflected by the current design? When business change direction there is usually a need for major changes to the website that may not be feasible without a complete redesign.

What do visitors say about the design?

Do you get positive feedback from your visitors about the current design? Do you get a lot of comments about areas that could be improved? Don’t forget to take your visitors’ options into consideration when deciding what type of redesign is best.

In what ways could you possibly improve the current design without completely redoing everything?

Is it even possible to improve current design without a complete overhaul? Some options to consider are using different and more effective graphics, higher quality photos, a new logo design, a change in color scheme, changes in fonts and typography, updated icons, etc. Will these things help to improve your website, or would it still be lacking in other ways?

What is the budget?

Of course, you will also need to consider how much money you are able to spend on the website. A complete redesign will usually be more expensive, but it may also be more effective. Determine how much money is available for the project so that you don’t waste your time on options that really aren’t even possible, and so that you don’t avoid going with an option that is actually affordable.

What content/pages will need to be added?

If there is a significant amount of content that needs to be added to the site to keep it current, a complete redesign may be necessary. This won’t always be the case, so make sure you evaluate you particular situation. Will the content that needs to be added fit within the design and navigational structure of the current site?

One of the reasons some people prefer absolute sizing rather than using em and percentages is the inconsistent approach to rounding half pixels in Browsers. John Resig investigates the reasons.