Content
Identify information content
In the user/audience analysis, users are
asked to rate different topics according to their level of
interest in them. When you begin designing, identify the
information content that your target audience found most
interesting and that will best fulfill your purpose.
Plan content that utilizes web technology in unique
and appropriate ways
Users will be drawn to your site if you
present your ideas and materials in ways that they could not
find in other media. For instance, providing users an area
where they can exchange fruit recipes is something they
might enjoy, which no other media form can offer.
Design your site so that it is accessible to a full
range of users
Provide support for users
with physical, environmental, and/or technical limitations.
Physical limitations include varying degrees of vision,
hearing, mobility or cognitive impairment. Environmental
limitations include poor lighting and a noisy work place,
and technical limitations stem from lower-version browsers,
low display resolutions, low settings for number of colors
displayed, and slow modems.
The Ease of Use Web
guidelines offered here contain information throughout to
assist you in creating an accessible Web site. For a
checklist on making sites accessible to users with
disabilities, refer to IBM's Web Accessibility Guidelines.
Plan to give users content that will format correct
in their browsers
Old browsers do not
support frames or JavaScript. Also, only newer browsers such
as Netscape 4.x and IE 4.0 will interpret Java applets. If
you want your site to be viewed by people who use older
browsers or screen readers, you can either provide a version
of your site that does not use these new technologies, or
you can use new technologies only as a way of supplementing
your other content.
For example, assume that
you want to offer a web page with a video of how to carve a
pineapple. For people with browsers that cannot display the
video, you may choose to provide another version of the page
that does not feature the video. Or, you may choose to
maintain only one version of the page and provide the video
as a way to augment detailed textual instructions of the
same information.
If you choose to provide
multiple versions of certain pages in your site, you can use
language script such as JavaScript to detect the type of
browser and serve the compatible page. (To download the code
for a browser sniffer, see "Browser Compatibility" in the
"Production" section.)
Obtain URLs that will enable users to find your site
easily
To enable users to find
your site and your product information easily, we recommend
placing product information within your company domain. In
other words, instead of creating specific domains for your
products (www.widget.com), use standard URL formats that
place the most important product information within the
company domain (www.acme.com/widget).
When 69 web users were
asked in a survey what URL they would expect to use to find
information about the Acme Widget,
-
38 participants listed
the URL of the company home page
-
21 participants listed a
product page URL with the company name appearing before
the product name
-
Only one participant
listed a product page URL that excluded the company name
When respondents were
asked to create a preferred URL for the Acme Widget,
-
54 out of 69
participants placed the company name before the product
name
-
Only 4 out of the 69
participants submitted URLs that omitted the company name
or positioned the product name before the company name
Sometimes product names
are better known than company names. If a significant
contingent of your audience is likely to look for your
product at www.productname.com, secure the domain name and
create a pointer from that address to your product page. By
using pointer pages, your users will learn about your
company and your other offerings |