Module 3 - WWW Standards

Optional ‘standards’ task:

Make a summary of what you believe are the 5 most important ‘rules’ for writing online. Think about any differences between the articles: for example, is the advice in Nielsen’s paper -- written in 1997 – still current?

LOG ENTRY:
Record your summaries and comments in your learning log (Allen et al. n.d.)

My top 5 rules are:

1. Fonts
It is very important to use the right font for the web sites. Helvetica, Verdana and Arial are good because it is simple, easy to read and recognize for the visitor. Colour and bold for highlighting the text will also help to catch the eye attention.

2. Bullet points
Using bullet points instead of putting in whole lot of information, this will make visitor turn away and lose of interest to read. Visitor prefers easy text information then long copy, they may just scanned through or ignore it if you offer them long copy. Therefore bullet points are helping the visitor read easily and understand faster.

3. User friendly
Try to make the website as user friendly as possible. Some web sites are quite difficult to use, because visitors hard to go back to home page or try to find the page they visit before. This could be the problem of the navigation or the web page design too complicated for them to use and understand, which mean visitors will find other similar web site instead of visit this web site again.

4. Simply the best
Not too much of text, not to link too many of videos and graphics. This will help to load faster and easy to focus on what the visitor should look first and also not too many advertisements because this will distract them.

5. Headings
Use interesting or eye catching title for heading will sure draw visitor attention to read the article or the web site. Even though not a bullet point forms of information, visitor will be quite happy to read it. But try to cut it short and keep the main message as simple as possible.

Reference
Allen, M., et al. (n.d.). Module 3 Contributing to the Infosphere. Curtin University of Technology. Retrieved August 7, 2009, from http://lms.curtin.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_18825_1&content_id=_985242_1