Analysis of a Website Design Survey Report

Francois briatte's recent survey on website design has led to a lot of gossip. The report investigates 10 Websites designed by famous designers and compares how designers process 25 public design elements. At the same time, he made a detailed analysis on the rate at which these websites handled the 25 Issues at the same or different rates.

I recommend this interesting survey report to every designer. If you don't have time, I will summarize my most important points and add some of my own conclusions and explanations (some may be different from briatte's) for you to share.

Similarities in Website Design

According to the survey report, 10 network designers have a significant similarity in dealing with a number of layout factors. This is a list of public elements with a probability of 80% or higher on websites designed by designers.

The link or returned link is underlined.

The accessed links and regular links are generally distinguished by changing the font color.

There is a clickable icon at the top of the page linked to the home page or index page.

The footer at the bottom of each page is consistent

The text background is white

The text font is sans-serif.

Use appropriate symbols (use the typographical symbols and marker in Entity/escape code to replace the common symbols of the General Body)

No more than six navigation methods

Each page contains a detailed copyright statement

Add the designer's full name on each page

The following elements show a probability of less than 80% on the website:

XML front

Additional reports appear on the left (but appear on the right is the most common)

The button is similar to the famous steal these button.

You can use the shortcut key to create a keyboard shortcut.

It is not surprising that the solutions for some common elements in the design list of all these designers are very similar. Using the underline link, you can set a clickable logo chart at the top of each page, and add consistent footer at the bottom. These are common practices in website design. These layout elements have become deeply rooted in the impression of website visitors. Designers certainly deeply understand how important it is to meet these expectations of visitors to create a useful website.

Briatte believes that the background of the text is mainly inherited from the printing design. In a sense, this may be true. But I don't think so. I think designers do this to cater to the expectations of visitors, because the white background makes visitors feel familiar and comfortable when reading.

Unlike the Printing standard, most designers use SANs-serif as the text font. As briatte points out, designers clearly understand that serif fonts are easier to recognize in prints, while sans-serif fonts are easier to read on the screen.

Interestingly, website designers pay special attention to typographical details, such as using wavy lines, hyphens, or dashes to replace common quotation marks. The dashes consist of hyphens.

Based on experience, these websites have limited the number of navigation entries to six. This is not uncommon, because the use of six navigation bars makes the website operate well, so it has evolved into the current rule.

Similarly, it is reasonable for the designer to add a detailed copyright statement on each page. In today's society, this legal necessity exists. Briatte attaches great importance to this phenomenon, that is, designers add their full names on each page, rather than nicknames. For me, it would be surprising that a designer does not sign his work. After all, most of them rely on website design to make a living. after doing so, every webpage is their professional advertisement.

None of these designers use XML headers on their websites. This is the opposite of the official recommendation, but it also acknowledges the fact that the XML front will cause some problems on the main browser. These websites are usually placed on the left, and on the right (70%). I am not sure why. Briatte considers it left to impede reading. However, I believe that putting the body above the supporting text (horizontal content) in the source code is an improvement in structure. Combined with the practice of putting the horizontal content on the left, I believe this is a style trend.

Button graphics on many websites are generally based on steal these, but none of these websites are under investigation. Of course, these professional designers will not borrow others' designs, and they will naturally create their own unique style buttons.

In the highly consistent design style of designers, it is amazing that only two of them have keyboard shortcuts to navigate the webpage. Obviously, or because of accessibility or availability, these designers don't have to bother setting up keyboard shortcuts. This situation may change in the future.

Differences in Website Design

It is not surprising that most designers process some elements of website design in the same way. However, the survey report does not point out some interesting differences in other aspects.

When I found that there were much more fixed la s than flow la s, it was just dumb. The fixed layout has its own advantages, but I still expect these versatile designers to show their skills in the flow layout. Designers may be bored with rigorous operations on the customer's website's mobile layout. They prefer to design relatively simple fixed-width la s for personal websites.

Another surprise to me is that only 70% of designers use XHTML, Which I originally imagined would be used by 100% of designers. Another surprise to me is that 60% of websites use image-based scroll bars on their navigation bar instead of pure CSS scrolling.

Another interesting difference is that 60% of designers use strict file types, which means they must follow more rigorous coding standards of that specification. In comparison, nearly half of users prefer relatively loose file types, such as transition files.

These websites have independent display style sheets in the same search box, which is also a difference between them. If these strongly recommended methods are more advantageous for website search, I wonder why they are doing so common. Half of the websites do not display style sheets, which is easy to explain because their design allows them to be successfully printed even if they do not have independent style sheets for prints.

Similarities and Differences

I think the most interesting thing is not to view the data in the survey report, but to visit these actual websites. Some websites reflect the current trend and layout style. In fact, some websites are responsible for this trend. Although these websites have significant similarities, they are still quite different. After all, this is not like cutting the bread. what we get is a replica set. Designers have enough space to exert their creative power and display their self-expression ability within the defined conventions and the constraints of proven technologies.