Patrick — do not design a site using tables. Absolutely learn CSS. And I also highly recommend learning the basics of Javascript and JQuery instead of Flash.

Note that I de-emphasize beauty as such. I am not against beauty, but it is not the most important thing by far. Under-design is better than over-design, where web pages are concerned.

John Culleton

Unfortunately, you always get a few third-hand ideas that have been recycled so often they come across as gospel.

The one I worry about for designers and clients is the caution on long content.

“Nobody reads” is a half-truth, and a whole lie.

Truth is, if your reader doesn’t care about your topic, no content is short enough. And if they don’t care, you don’t care. Your site is not for them.

But if they find your topic interesting, then don’t shortchange them with skimpy content. Give them the detail they’re looking for. Be their source.

For example, this comment is well down a long page of text. You may have skimmed some comments, but here you are.

So there’s no content that’s too long. There’s only content that’s too boring.

2. Spend a lot of time planning the hierarchy of your site. When you’re all finished with the planning, go back and plan some more. A lot more.

3. Be prepared to explain to your client why (in most cases) they should cut out 90 percent of their over-written content.

4. Don’t hide the basic contact information on a “contact us” page.

5. Tell the client at the beginning of the job that they will have to pay for changes they order after a certain point in the process. Put it in writing.

6. Put everything in writing. Spell out exactly what the client will get for the price you propose. And more important, spell out exactly what is not included in your price. Domain name registration . . . hosting services . . . lots of other stuff . . . customers often assume your design price covers all that . . . but if your price does not include all that, make sure they know it.

7. Get everything in writing. Signed by them.

8. Be prepared for the client’s 12-year-old nephew (who’s a computer genius) to be mentioned several times during the process.

9. Get at least one-third of the cost estimate paid in advance. One of the first things customers seem to “forget” about is a web site they’ve gotten you started working on. Priorities change. Cash-flow problems happen. And you may have done a lot of work . . . a lot of work . . . but the customer doesn’t want to pay until the job is finished . . . but he (or she) is “too busy” to get back to working on it.

10. The project will take longer than you thought it would. Probably a lot longer.

A few points I would add:

• Realize that only 30% of your visitors are actually going to “land” first on your home page (Nielsen data), which is why navigation is so important.

• Tell your clients that they need to have a focused message that jumps out at visitors throughout the website, and that navigation needs to reflect that key message. Otherwise, they’ll create cacophony and chaos (too many shouting voices in a crowd and you can’t hear anything anymore).

• To explain why they need to start the page content with the most important elements, I tell my clients (as Ellen mentioned) to think newspapers and “above the fold,” and I tell them that only 30% of visitors actually scroll down (Nielsen data again).

• Beg your clients to keep texts short. People don’t read on the web, they “scan” the first 3-4 words of each paragraph to see if they are interested (Nielsen eye-tracking studies). So clients should edit down a first time to shorten to the essential . . . and then edit down again! . . . And start paragraphs with key words.

• BEST TIP FOR THE END: Yes, people struggle to organize their website content. What has worked wonders for me is the following: Get the client’s key decision-makers together for three hours (tell them how essential it is), and have them go through the “Post-it-notes exercise” (I call it). Their objective is to build the whole architecture (with sections and sub-sections) on the wall of their conference room, before they leave, where each Post-it note is a single webpage! And get them to sign off on it!

A pleasure to have read you all.

To me, what’s important is content that’s useful to the viewer. Content that answers a question. Content that provides a solution. Content that benefits your viewer.

Sometimes you have to remember that your website is not for you, but for your viewers (or clients). Don’t put content on your website that you care about, put content on your website that your viewers care about. Your viewers will thank you for it.

From a viewers point of view, it really comes down to two things:

1) What are you offering?

2) Why should I care?

Answering those two questions could essentially sell the viewer. If you can explain or show your viewer what you’re offering and why they should care, as in how it BENEFITS them, you have a good chance of winning them over!

You can have a nice-looking website — a clean, organized layout, beautiful fonts and colors, and other stuff — but if you don’t have valuable, beneficial content, then why would a viewer stick around, let along return to your website?

Example: I’m addicted to Before & After. Why? Because they offer really cool design articles in print and pdf format. The reason why I care is because they make graphic design easy and fun while helping me provide beautiful results (websites, brochures, business cards, etc.) for my clients.

So remember, it’s two things:

1) Tell your viewers what you’re offering

2) And tell them why they should care (why it’s beneficial to them).

All of this is easier said than done, but boy is it fun!

First, a disclaimer from me: I don’t work for Adobe, but I do use Flash :-)

As this is a site and forum for designers, it pains me to see a potent design tool such as Flash being sidelined and rejected out of hand because so many on the Internet have misused it.

In the hands of a capable and experienced designer, the elegance and dynamism that Flash can add to a site is unmatched by other web-scripting tools. It can generally load faster than any CSS or Javascript-enabled page — provided designers know what they are doing, and don’t “weigh” it down with images.

I’d say the main problem is that search engines cannot see what is inside a Flash movie. For this reason, do not create your site entirely in Flash, but use search-friendly CSS and Javascript pages, with Flash embedded within those pages as needed and where it serves a purpose.

Flash gives the designer complete and total control over how the site will look across all platforms, all browsers, all operating systems. It is analogous to a movie experience in a theatre, with the addition of interactivity, which is really what the web is all about.

I would suggest creating pages with CSS and Javascript, optimize for search engines and browsers, and use Flash seamlessly within the pages as individual movies.

Thanks for this great article that puts so many issues into perspective. My experience from the print design world and lessons learned are similar; it’s so helpful to see these principles clearly articulated.

I’ve never thought of it in this way but how true: “The biggest part of design is editing. Editing — whether prose or music or movies — is a matter of deciding what to include and in what sequence.”

I think another important point is that as digital media evolve, so do their design principles and best practices. What works today may be out of date tomorrow.

My personal favorite tip: “8) Before approving your design, ask yourself three questions: 1) Is it beautiful? 2) Is it simple? 3) Is it clear? You want a yes on all three.”