Web developers and web product designers should continuously be considering all of the following aspects of web sites and web applications at every stage of their work if they are aiming to produce high quality web presences.
Semantic
Be as meaningful as possible, utilising and leveraging all relevant aspects of semantic web as outlined in this resource and many others.
Standards compliant
Comply with the relevant W3C standards in order to meet the internationally recognised best coding practices, which work well across many different browsers.
Accessibility
Your solution will need to work on devices with minimal technological support, including screen readers and mobile devices.
If your main solution does not work with these devices, you should provide alternative solutions which do.
Aesthetic
Good looking and easy to use from the aesthetic point of view.
Well designed and well laid out for optimal visual impact and influence.
Functional
The solution should fulfill a particular purpose or functional for which it has been created.
There is nothing worse in the world than an unnecessary web site or something that duplicates already existing provision.
User centric
Every solution should be built based on well identified user needs and requirements.
Since users are those who ultimately use the web, their needs and wants need to be addressed with the solution.
Take all aspects of User Centered Design into account when trying to achieve this aspect.
Relevant to business
Businesses have their own, often opposing, processes compared to users’ needs.
These need to be addressed as well as users’ requirements, since without them, business processes will not be fulfilled and catered for properly.
Getting the right balance between user experience and business needs is often one of the sticking points when developing any web presence.
Maintainable
If the created solution is not maintainable, it will not be able to keep up with the inevitable on-going changes which happen in the world of Internet all the time.
MySpace.com is a great example of how a non-maintainable solution, which initially was a relative success, turned into the ultimate unmaintainable mess, which is now heading towards a total failure.
Maintenance is the aspect of Internet solutions which also tends to waste the highest amount of resources and this is the case with maintenance of any product of any type.
Inter-compatible
Increasingly it is becoming a common requirement that any web site or web application needs to work seamlessly in context of another web site or application.
This can on some level be achieved through use of RSS feeds, but on some deeper levels it can be achieved through APIs and to greater or lesser extent with proper, semantic code.
Future proof
A solution which only works for the given time it is written in is no good.
Good Internet resources ought to reside on-line forever and be easily accessible and usable non-stop.
If a solution needs a major re-work every time an upgrade is required, it is not considered to be future proof.
In front end coding terms, proper standards compliant, semantic user interfaces usually ensure that the end solution will be future proof.
Usability
A solution can be accessible, but not necessarily usable.
In terms of usability, a solution can be barely usable or highly usable.
One needs to ensure that a web site or a web application can be used with a mouse, on a mobile device, using a keyboard only, when the interface size is increased by the user and so on.
Search Engine Optimised
Once again, following best practices for user interface development, should ensure high level of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
However, SEO is an aspect which ought to be addressed as a stand-alone issue too, as it is somewhat a subject to high levels of competition in many industries, so semantic coding will usually not be enough to achieve high SEO impact.
One of the subtle aspects of SEO which are related to this resource is the matter of URL structures, which can somewhat make or break an SEO strategy.
Relevant and useful content
Writing for web is somewhat of an art form.
Users do not read on-line.
They skim the text and randomly read in and out at certain points on the page.
Having a good quality content on each page can be a make or break of any web site or a web application.
Written by Jason Grant on 10th July 2009