Internet websites & web programming

How should be a good website

As my experience in Web programming may not be very long (I mean, not in the decades, as my overall programming experience is), my experience in Information Technology and in programming tecniques is, indeed: so that my approach to internet and Web programming is not improvisation.

In dealing with Web programming, I bear in mind some points which I want to stick to, points I believe are mostly just common sense, and stemmed from my experience as a user of the Web, and from my education and my professional experience too, because actually a website is not so different from a computer program.

The difference is that a Web application does not run on your computer, but on a remote one, which is called the server, only the output presentation is sent to your computer for viewing or for some service operation.The basic rules are therefore more or less the same. And it is not bad that these same rules are suggested to SEO professionals for a high ranking and a top positioning on search engine, and namely on Google.

1. A Web site should be useful: it has to give information or provide useful services (useful is not necessarily meaning making money: a dating site is useful if the user can find a good date and have fun, no matter how expensive it is). A web site that simply describes itself is quite nonsense.
2. A Web site should be easy to navigate: if the visitor takes more than a few seconds to identify the information he or she needs, or to find a menu pointing to such an information, the site has failed its purpose. The less you force your visitor to think, the more likely he will concentrate on your business.
3. A Web site should be as light as possible. It is true that today the Internet is fast and, sometimes, very fast. But, sometimes, very slow: maybe somebody is browsing your site with a smartphone from a weak signal area. However, if a visitor has to wait ten seconds or more to load every page from your site, it is likely that as the second page is loading she gives up with your site at all, to come back never more. Maybe you have noticed that this site contains very few graphics, I mean few images, and no animation: it is for some reason.
4. A website should never have background music: you are free to believe that a noisy site is more interesting, but, apart the fact that "musical" pages download much more slowly (and waste a lot of expensive bandwidth from your hosting service), when I land to a site shooting music, possibly bad music (bear in mind that musical tastes are highly personal, and what you believe sublime could be a pain in the neck to someone else), if I can not instantly find the button that stops the noise (because, to my ear, it is noise), I leave the site in a split second. And, bet it, many others. Try to think of someone navigating to a noisy site as he or she is at work, while his boss is not supposing he or she is surfing the web in that very moment. Fun, really fun ...
5. A website should work with any browser, even minimal (this one can be navigated using Lynx). This site is using JavaScript features, and I used them only to show you that I can use it, and, if you like them, I can give you a drop down menu, for instance; but it works the same even if JavaScript is disabled, and even if you disable cookies. Try it, you will see each page is still accessible in some way.
6. For the same reason, a website should not rely on pop-ups, ie on those smaller windows that sometimes open by themselves. Because they are very annoying and abused advertising tools, and sometimes make it nearly impossible to navigate, it is very likely that popups are disabled. So if you can do without them, it is much better.
7. Similarly, a website should require a minimal amount of plugins, possibly none. First, it may happen that your visitor, when asked to install a plugin, even the best known of them as, for example, Adobe Reader or Flash Player, he is alarmed, and, fearing to install a virus or something, just gives up. Moreover, the Flash Player modules or the Java applets or CGI can be very big and heavy: your site is likely to become slow, needing that annoying message: "please stand by while loading up ...". Also, a search engine does not see the content of your applet. It is just a big, heavy hole.
8. To keep the site as light as possible, any activity that can be handled by the server should be handled by the server. Apart from the fact that there is no way to know which browser and old version your visitor is using: no matter as unlikely, it is possible that your visitor disables JavaScript. Moreover, it is likely the server is quite a performing machine. The client machine could be 15 years old, could have 256 MB RAM (or less), and a CPU from the 80s. Much better if the heavy load is taken by the best truck.
9. Last but not least, the visitor should like your site. It is not important if you like it, or your webmaster likes it, or your cousin adore it (because it happens he is the web designer). The only one important thing is that the visitors do like it.

Of course, these are my personal advice: but I have seen it is the same advice of some very well known web gurus. Of course, when you will order me your site and you want it full of beautiful hip-hop music and applets and animations and videos of naked girls, when your business is industrial machinery, you just ask, and I will be happy to please you. As you probably know, the customer is always right. But, think about the successful website, how they are. Those sites clicked by the millions, worldwide: Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Google ...