Is My Web Site Ineffective?
An Introduction

149 Fatal Errors, 82 Serious Mistakes and 2 Ultimate Web Design Checklists

Intro | Checklist 1 | Checklist 2 | What do I do now?


I get a lot of email“Is my web site ineffective ?”

Of all the e-mail questions I receive, this one amazes me the most.

I used to answer these e-mails by saying the best way to figure out if your site is ineffective was to look around at the different sites in the non-profit world, look at all the Daily Design Discussions, and notice the similarities between what I mention and what’s on your site.

Now, I’m providing an easy-to-use solution. Compare your site’s features against two easy-to-use checklists and find out if your site’s design is ineffective.

The Problem With Checklists

There are a lot of checklists about good and bad web design and the problem with them is simple — they’re vague. Two examples from a checklist touting a $10,000 seminar on improving your web site were:

Is essential content available where needed?
Is the text legible?

Your natural reaction is going to be either “Yes” or “No” because they’re vaguely phrased. If I asked you “Is your site’s text right justified and if it is, then your site is ineffective,” you could definitively answer the question and know where you stand. I’ve also just saved you $10,000.

I hope these two checklists will the be-all and end-all of web design checklists.

Note: There are very few e-commerce and search engine optimization entries. I feel these subjects deserve their own checklist. Obviously, almost anything you do to straighten out your site’s design will help with optimization. I’m also fairly light on forms, probably because I’ve created so few.

Obviously, I need to fill in some gaps and there may be some elements I’ve missed in my initial run-through. E-mail me with the fatal and not-so-fatal design flaws you think I’ve missed.

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Hey! You May Not Have to Fill Out The Checklist!

Since the site is for NPOs, it’s logical that most of you should go through the checklists. However, if your site is for…

  • a movie
  • a movie company
  • a musical band
  • a record label
  • an art site
  • an experimental site
  • a game company
  • an individual game
  • a personal web site

…then you can skip these checklists because your site isn’t real. By “real” I mean your site conveys information or is selling products. You have a site where people are held accountable. NPOs are always accountable.

What I’m Not Covering

what we're not covering
Click to enlarge

  • Planning your web site.
  • Determining our target audience
  • Who is our target audience?
  • Discussing our goals.
  • Budgeting the money.
  • Hiring the people to create/run the site.
  • Et cetera.

I’m not covering any of the pre-planning that should occur before you start your site or create a new version.

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Before You Start The Checklists

While validating/checking your site against the following tools won’t guarantee your site is ineffective, you won’t have to answer certain questions with a check mark.

Check your page’s HTML at http://validator.w3.org. Fix your mistakes — or as many as you can.

Check your page’s/site’s CSS at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/. Fix your mistakes — or as many as you can.

Check your links at http://validator.w3.org/checklink. Fix your mistakes.

Check your images for accessibility issues at http://juicystudio.com/services/image.php. Fix your mistakes.

Check your content for readability at http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php. Make sure your content is not too “smart” for your audience.

Check to see if your text and background colors have sufficient contrast at http://juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.php. Fix your colors.

Check to see if your CSS’s text and background colors have sufficient contrast at http://www.accesskeys.org/tools/color-contrast.html. Fix your colors.

Check to see how your page looks to the colorblind at http://www.q42.nl/demos/colorblindnesssimulator/colors.html

Check your site on http://www.instantposition.com for the first 5 keywords you use to describe your site.

Check your page’s content accessibility using Cynthia Says at http://www.cynthiasays.com/

Check your page’s performance and web page speed at http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Check that your page/site looks the same in over 80 different browser combinations at BrowserCam

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Let’s Go!

Checklist 1: Is My Web Site Ineffective?

Checklist 2: Is My Web Site Ineffective?

What do I do now?

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