The Important Web Rule

I believe the most important rule to remember when you are building a website is to make sure that the site is easy to navigate. You should make sure that all of your links work and that you are never sent to a page that has no "out." The Spiderpro web style guide refers to this as "dead-end pages." It is very frustrating to have to either use the back browser arrow or to actually have to exit a website altogether and find a way back in. Every page should at least have a link back to the homepage of the website. This was something that I made sure to do when making my Website #2 revisions.
It is also very important that the first page of your website identifies what the website is all about. People want to know right away if the website will have what they are looking for. Lynch & Horton's, "Web Style Guide" advises, "Talk to the people who make up your target audience, put yourself in their shoes, and make the items and services they want the most prominent items on the home page." We were instructed to do this for this assignment and it makes sense. Our home pages only have a brief introduction to what our sites are about and everything else can be accessed through the portfolio link we were asked to create.
While these two things appear to be very simple, and perhaps even elementary, they are both very important to having an organized website that people will actually look at. Lynch & Horton say, "Although people will notice the graphic design of your Web pages right away, the overall organization of the site will have the greatest impact on their experience" (Web Style Guide).