Why You Should Stick

To Design Conventions

When designing a website, pay close attention to the conventions that are in use on the web today. There's a big difference between being innovative and being arrogant. In almost all cases, you should be sticking to the conventions.

Why? Well, there are literally millions of other websites, so if your website doesn't work the way the user expects, then its going to seem hard to use and many users will get annoyed and go elsewhere.

The Learning Curve

When people come to your website, you don't want them to have to figure out how to use it before they can get started. You also don't want to write big help files and FAQs just to explain how to use it.

The web is competitive enough that, in most cases, your visitors will just desert you for your easier-to-use competitor. Even if there isn't one now, one will spring up and take advantage of the niche you created with your bad design and take your market away.

What Are The Conventions?

The web's design conventions are simple and effective. So much so you probably don't realize they're there most of the time. Here are some examples:

1. Your logo should be a link to your homepage.
2. The links on your navigation bar should all be internal links.
3. Clicking a thumbnail (small picture) will display a larger picture.
4. Links go to HTML documents unless they're clearly marked as a movie, PDF, etc.
5. Things are bought by adding them to a shopping 'cart' and then going through a 'checkout'.
6. Identity checks are done with a username and password system.

There are many, many more.

What Happens When You Break Them?

People get annoyed. It's frustrating to expect to see one thing and something totally unexpected jumps up. Jumping through hoops to figure out how to do simple things is a sure way to lose potential customers.

You only have 5 - 10 seconds to convince a new surfer to stay at your site. 

Exceptions

The only time you should break the web's conventions is when your website is different enough that it will be worth people learning a better way to use it. For example, when Google launched Gmail, the world's first webmail service with a gigabyte of storage space, they introduced an interface that used Javascript to change entire pages without reloading. That broke the web's conventions, but worked well enough that the technique caught on, and is now starting to develop new conventions all of its own.

Don't get carried away, though, and start thinking that because Google can redefine conventions, you can too.

The ultimate test is to sit an experienced web user in front of your site. If they get confused, it's back to the drawing board.

Part of the power of the web is that it gives a consistent interface to the world, so use those standard conventions as much as possible. It'll pay off in happy users.