Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Guidelines to Accessible Website that Lures visitors

Guidelines to Accessible Website that Lures visitors Website decide your market presence. If you get numerous visitors a day then your site is said to be a well placed website, but what if your site witnesses very few visitors a day? What could be the reason for this low amount of visitor, when you have made a good informative website? Here the question is about accessibility. In today's scenario, where there is an abundance of websites, visitors look for sites which are more accessible and easy to use. But you must be thinking, why emphasize on accessibility when your website is already there? Hmm. if you are here to make big bucks and your competitors are at your every clumsy step, then you should not take even a small chance. Now your visitor might get you but what if you will find millions of e- commerce pages on the web and where your page is just one of millions? If at that time your site will be accessible then only you will get maximum visitors.

Websites are a communication mode between you and your customer. Hence, all you need is to be clear in your approach so that the visitor will be able to understand your offerings. Following are few guidelines to make your website more accessible and user friendly.

  • Easy Alternatives to audio and visual content
    Your site's accessibility depends on the system where it is being viewed. It is possible that some systems cannot interpret your audio or visual, hence your website should provide similar alternatives to your image or audio. It should make the system interpret the auditory and visual content. You should put enough text explanation and links to help your visitors interpret your website

  • Adorn it but don't put over make up
    Getting a beautiful website is easy but what makes you unique is the professional approach you put in your website. Use expressive visual clues rather than just hues to convey your information. Colors are good to make two dimensional images but when the medium is a web then visual interaction is must.

  • Apply proper style sheet
    Following a proper style sheet in your HTML page can make your site more accessible. You should maintain the proper specifications to make a faultless HTML page. Every HTML tag should be placed properly. Internet Explorer won't display your page if you fail to notice even a single table tag.
  • Use proper language
    Identify proper HTML language tags, to specify the language used in your website. Be lucid while using abbreviations. Make sure you specify acronyms within your content when they occur first.

  • Make transforming tables
    Don't make every representation diagram purely for design. Put enough information inside the diagram which can easily lure the attention of the visitor. If you use tables, then place information inside the table. Don't insert tables which make no sense. If you wish to emphasize your text then present it in a tabular format. Provide a proper table to text convert in your website. These small details make your website more users friendly.
  • Ease of use
    If you write HTML then you should always take care of the version you are using. If you use a specific version then it might not work in all the systems. So to make your page more accessible make sure all the versions should work when viewing your page.

  • User friendly visuals
    Visuals can not always be pleasant to your visitors. If your website has animations, moving visuals then it might annoy your visitor. To avoid this, you need to give your visitors ways to stop these animations or insert options where your visitor can get animation free page.

  • Provide guidelines for interfaces
    You might insert many embedded interfaces like applets, plug ins in your website, which may not be familiar to your visitor. Hence, your web content should provide user guidelines for these embedded interfaces.
  • Have clear navigation system
    Be consistent in your navigation system. Use proper words to explain your links. Do not make ambiguous statements while comprehending something important. For example, if you are an online store, you should give links showing buy or add to cart in your product catalogue for visitors to navigate directly to order page.

  • Ensure faultless documentation
    This is applicable for all kinds of writing. Whether you want to be accessible or not, if your information is understandable then you will be easily accessible. Don't put jargons, spelling or grammatical errors in your content this distracts your visitor's attention. Make your site impeccable and comprehensible for your visitors. Accessibility comes easily if you take care on few things while making your site. Above written things are just introductions to make your site more interactive. But, it's always you who can understand the need of your visitors in a better way.
http://www.e2solutions.net/articles/what-is-accessible-website-design.html