What is a web 2.0 designed website: My web 2.0 design standards

in Tech News by Francis Simisim — June 27, 2009 at 12:00 PM | 10 comments

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My company, Gang Ventures, have been designing web 2.0 websites since we started a year ago. But to my surprise, web 2.0 is still not a very known word to most (especially in the Philippines). I used to do outsourcing and one of the most frequently asked questions (especially for corporates) is what is a web 2.0 design?…

– “Web 2.0” refers to what is perceived as a second generation of web development and web design. It is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, User-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. – by Wikipedia –

Web 2.0 is the term used to describe websites that allows users to contribute contents to their websites. Good examples are Facebook, eBay, etc. However, web 2.0 isn’t just about the technicalities, but is also about aesthetics (looks). These are the aesthetic / design factors that would make a website look web 2.0…

User Friendly

– How can users contribute if they don’t know how to use your website? –

The whole essence of web 2.0 is making it user friendly, as you want users to contribute to the website. However, User friendly means that a first time user should be able to learn how to use your website in the smallest amount of time. I have seen websites that are really creatively designed, yet the user doesn’t know how to use the website (which defeats the whole point of you making a website for visitors to see). There are 2 general factors that I believe makes up a user friendly website

Layout

• No Rules, be as creative as you can
• But make sure… Research popular websites (your industry and social media) and see what are people used to seeing
• Highlight contents or links that are important (e.g. adding images / making buttons / borders)
• Avoid Information overload (avoid overly crowding your layout)
• Proper spacing between images or text

Navigation

• Navigation is consistent throughout the web pages
• There’s a main navigation as well as a navigation in the footer
• If possible or relevant, Have bread crumbs in your website (the links that looks like Home > Services > Massage)

Lively Colors

– If it was all black and white, would you feel excited about it? –

Web 2.0 is all about User Generated Contents, so to encourage people to share you’d have to spark their creativity. Lively bright colors make the website more creative and encourages a happy mood, which then, psychologically, encourages people to share or generally getting them to be more inspired or involved with your website.

Colors

• Bright but easy on the eyes
• Balancing bright and dark colors
• Consistency of colors from logo and website
• ‘Mostly’ dominated by the white color

Simple, Clean and Minimalist

– Think about what you REALLY need, think Essentials –

In today’s web design, less means more, the lesser the information cluttered in your website the more people can see what they want to see. By maintaining simplicity, the visitor / user can learn how to use your website in a faster pace and therefore doesn’t waste their time. Also by being clean and minimalist, users can get to the information that they want by easily finding the right buttons or links to the web page that they want to go to.

Minimalist

• Shorten text to the absolute minimum (less than 100 words, but ensure that the message conveyed is still the same)
• Put yourself in the visitor’s point of view, and think, is this what you really need?

Load Time

– How fast does your website load? –

 

Load time of a website is one of the most important thing that you need to consider (although not related to looks, but is important so I included it). No matter how good looking or user friendly your website is, if it doesn’t load up on the screen of the visitor then it is as good as a badly designed website.

 

Speed

• Assess Internet speeds of your target market
• Avoid using images that are big sized (use the right size to avoid ‘pixilated’ images).
• Avoid using Flash animations (it’s only great once a flash expert optimizes it for you)

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