Web Design Tips I Learned From PowerPoint

When I was in college, PowerPoint was just coming into regular use by most of the faculty for their lectures. To this day I've seen my fair share of them, and I can quickly tell the difference between one that was well thought out and one that was quickly thrown together. In a poorly designed presentation, some of the typical problems will be:

• Pointless Slides - This is the person who is constantly pressing the "next" button because their slides don't have very much substance. They'll go through a hundred slides in a 5 minute presentation, and you're left thinking more about how many slides they actually used than their subject matter.

• Heavy Slides - These are slides that have so much information that you'd think they'd just fall off the screen. Because there is so much there, it makes it very difficult to identify the relevant information on the slide, even if the lecturer highlights it.

• Distracting Slides - Clearly, somebody got a little bored while working on their presentation, so they added their favorite video clip, song or image to the presentation to "spice it up". However, they can break up the point of the presentation if they are not relevant to the topic being discussed. Among the bad ideas: using a Flintstones clip during a palentology lecture.

• Poor Contrast Choices - This presentation usually begins with "Well, it looked fine on my computer at home", but you can't read half the text because of the background chosen. Just one reason why high-contrast is a good thing.

If you're seeing where I'm going, you'll see that many of these same problems can be made with web pages as well. So, here's the tips we can gather from the mistakes of others (and ourselves, in some cases):

• Make Every Page Have A Purpose - Try to avoid linking to a page of links (i.e. a directory structure) unless you need to do so. There are a number of alternatives (including CSS menus and drop-down box directories) that will allow you to do the same more efficiently and effectively.

• Don't Inundate Your Visitors - Avoid overwhelming your visitors with too many options to read and click on, and keep page text to a reasonable length. Some pages may require more text on them, such as an "About Our Beliefs" or "Our History" page, so try and break them down into sub-sections with in-page links at the top of the page for easier navigation.

• Don't Try To Re-Create Homer's Website - Make sure everything on your page has a purpose, and that you're not just using images or other features just because you can.

• Let Me See What You've Got - Lastly, make sure that you put text in high-contrast situations because some monitors don't display subtle color differences particularly well. Just because it worked for you, don't assume that it will for everyone else.