The best way to summarize what I found would be:

For every 246 human users clicking a link on a page, 1 would be clicking a tag link.

To add Zebra Strips to a list, all you need to do is adding the following pseudo-class to the end of the CSS element you wish to edit:

ul#example_list li:nth-child(odd) {
 background-color:#FFF;
}

In this example, I’ve used an unordered list element. The data in the brackets refers to the “nth” number to affect, for example putting “(even)” will affect every even <li>. You can also put number in, for example “(3)” would affect every 3rd <li>.

Below is a link to a working example of the code in action (Feel free to copy & share).

If you want to read a bit more about the nth-child pseudo-class I recommend the sitepoint CSS reference.

1. Quality is better than Quantity

This tip can be put in several contexts. Content wise, if you have thousands of pages essentially saying “I’m great” in thousands of ways you have wasted your time creating them. Instead make a single easy to find page, which engages the user quickly and gets to the point.

Traffic wise, it’s better to have a small audience which engages with your content (or will pay for it) then a large audience who do not engage with your content and end up just increasing server costs. A notable example of a Company which has decided to focus on serving the 10% of their audience who will pay for content is News Corp.

2. Start Small

When you start you may want to do everything under the sun. Unfortunately in most cases this leads to websites stalling in development. For example many websites spend years “Under Construction” and when they are finally released their product or service is outdated or uncompetitive.

3. Focus on your Niche

Don’t try to be everything, otherwise your resources to provide a good product will too stretched. Instead focus on what you are interested in or what you are good at; your content will reflect this.

4. Test your website

I really cannot stress this enough. Having a website which is visually displeasing or fails to work will affect your long term performance. Make sure you check your website works in as many browsers as you can and if possible, get a friend to take a look at it.

You may find it useful to visit WebPagesThatSuck.com, for ideas on what not to do while making a website.

5. Be Creative

Do something unique, no one wants to see another knock off of Facebook or YouTube. Have something which is a solution to a problem on the internet. For example, Twitter stopped the need for people to post one line blog posts.

A computer finds it really difficult to know if this is correctly orientated.

Here is a version I wrote which to can use on your website.

View Demo Download

This script makes use of jQuery to allow the user to rotate the images and a little PHP to check the image was rotated into the correct position.

1. “If there is automatically playing music and videos, it will get a users attention”

Unfortunately not. All this does is aggravating users who are startled by an unknown (and unwanted) audio source. This will obliviously lead to users closing your web browser just to stop the annoying voice. In a recent piece of research by Full On Design in regard to what people like and dislike about websites, one respondent said when asked about automatically playing sales pitches:

I hate it when some annoying sales crap comes up, as it interrupts my music or podcasts [...] normally I would instantly close the website which is to blame.
Anonymous Respondent

2. “If I use a big red font all in uppercase, they will notice & remember it”

No, this technique just makes your website aesthetically displeasing, which will just make it look like you’re an idiot.

3. “I need everything on one page…that way users have less clicking to do”

The “less clicking” has a point here, users are lazy creatures the more they have to click and type the more unwilling to take in your message they will become. You can try this for yourself, try not using your keyboard while surfing the web, you will be surprised how little you actually end up using it.

However loads of text on a single page will lead to “information overload”. In the study cited above, we also found that most users tend to read headings before deciding whether to read an entire web page, in some cases the user stopped reading after three 150 word paragraphs (Hint: Use images, shorter paragraphs and headings to break up content into more bite size chunks).

4. “I need to put ads everywhere to make money”

Unfortunately not true. In this web 2.0 generation users have become essentially blind to blatant advertising, in some cases users actively block adverts. Users are in fact more likely to click inline adverts (Where an advert is placed into the content), for example I could write an article being very positive about a service available and receive a small payment from that company.

5. “Buying traffic is a great way to increase sales”

This is very dependent on the type of traffic you’re receiving. If your purchasing traffic and users return or buy your product then its money well spent. If a user visits then leaves then you have essentially just flushed your money down the drain. Here is what an expert said on the topic:

For many years a large number of small websites purchased traffic in the hope that an increase in traffic would increase sales. In reality very few websites saw a return on the investment they made.
Dan, XDnet.co.uk

Unfortunately, lots of webmasters still have these outdated ideologies. Luckily though, they tend not to rank well.

1. It only works in some browsers

I’m a very keen Firefox fan, and I hate it when a website has been designed for IE and only IE. It’s not hard to make a website work in the main 5 browsers (Chrome, Opera, Firefox, IE7, IE6 and Safari).

Oracle PartnerNetwork’s website uses JavaScript tabs for tabs, unfortunately in IE8 they don’t work.

2. Invalid HTML/CSS/JavaScript

Nothing is worse than a website which just does not work; having invalid code can normally be the cause of most problems (For example, forgetting to close an element).

Be sure to check your website with The W3C Markup Validation Service before you release your company’s website.

3. It needs JavaScript to work

I like to have JavaScript disabled when I surf the web, mostly so I can save a few milliseconds per a page load (which really does add up over time). If you website is unable to work with JavaScript disabled, you seriously need to reconsidered how you have programmed your website.

4. Ugly is an understatement for your design

If you have poor contrast between the text on your page and the background colour you use, your instantly making your users eyes work extra hard to read your text.

I would love to read more UGA Digital, but I white on a light colour (in this case, a whitish blue) is just silly.

5. Your website lacks focus or a point in general

Sometimes I get the feeling when I visit a website, that the person who created it started with an idea…then lost it at some point. Limit your website’s products and features as too many will create too much choice for users (not to mention create an unnecessarily large navigation).

Trinity Convergence is a really good example of a webshite which really does “Miss the point”.

Note: I almost put “Your Website is Unnecessary”, and then I remembered I’m one of over 10,000 blogs regarding Web Design.

The phrase “You what now?” comes to mind.

Here are some alternatives, which are a little more user friendly.

Logic Test

This method essentially asked your users to solve a simple puzzle, which a bot will find difficult, or CPU intensive to solve. In this simplified example, where we are going to ask the colour of the box (or the circle in the box).

Few users will find this test hard

The combination of differentiating between shapes and colours is quite easy for a human to do, but a computer can find this quite difficult. On the other hand though, this is quite work intensive for the programmer and unless you create a wide range of questions, you are a little limited.

View Example

Dummy Fields

In a nutshell, this puts a field which is hidden via CSS which requests a common piece of information (such as email, or message). If the field has been filled in, you can assume that a bot is being used.

Unfortunately, some modern browsers sometimes automatically fill in form for the user, which is a moderate problem.

View Example

Response Timer

This is another method which does not involve users having to do anything. The theory behind this method, is to see how long the user takes to submit the form. If the user takes a short amount of time, they are either super human, or bots. This is relatively full proof as most bots will instantly submit a form.

View Example

JavaScript Extra

This technique assumes that most bots are unable to use JavaScript, so making JavaScript write a little extra piece of information to the form should stop bots. According to the W3C 95% of users have JavaScript turned on, which is good.

View Example

Akismet

This is one of the best methods of stopping spam, essentially Akismet compare what your user has posted with other stuff posted all over the internet. For me, it’s never missed any piece of spam.

Conclusion

Is there a single alternative to do it all? No, but with a combination of all the methods we can reduce the overall amount of spam. In the next example I’ve combined all the above methods (minus Akismet) into a single file which assess weather a user is human on a point system (3 out of 4 will assume human). Feel free to copy it.

View Example | View Class File

Be Consistent

Having a similar layout across your website helps with user familiarisation, if the layout drastically changes the user will tend to assume they are on another website (users really are that silly, hence phishing scams doing so well).

An example of where most websites fail to be consistent is in add-on packages such as Blogs and Forums. In a recent survey by Full On Design a very high percentage of websites which used a readymade blog (WordPress etc) or forum (PHPBB, MyBB etc) did not have a consistent layout.

Don’t send mixed/complex messages

24/7 support which is offline, this could confuse users.

As mentioned above, users get confused easily and a confused user is an unhappy user. Putting an excessive amount of information on a single page on a poorly constructed page can make a user think “this is not worth my time” and they will leave.

To fix this, quite simple check how your website reads with a 3rd party and condense your data into as few words as possible (but don’t lose the original message). Really good examples of websites which “get to the point” quickly are Facebook and Apple. Examples of websites which epically fail to get to the point are IBM and Bebo.

Check for errors

Having a big “Error: The code is rubbish” is a big “hack me, I’m an idiot” sign essentially. Make sure your website works the way you intend to before you release the code (This includes cross browser testing). Luckily most server side code has error suppression and client side coding has lots of cheat sheets.

If you are adjusting a large website with a large amount of PHP, consider looking into PHP’s built in Error Handling.

Breadcrumbs

Home page > Section page > Subsection page
Above is an example of breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are an easy way to tell users where they are, where they came from and in some cases where they are going. If you use WordPress there is a really nice plug-in to create breadcrumbs for you.

Be Clear

eBuyer is very clear about how many steps are left when purchasing stuff.

Remove as much clutter as you can and make sure that your website is easily read. Keep in mind; on the web it’s better to have less useful information than more useless information.

Useful Links

50 Web Usability Tips that Help You Attract and Retain Visitors to Your Website
Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design
Breadcrumbs In Web Design: Examples And Best Practices

Leaving watermarks on images

This is from a real designers website…I haven’t the heart to contact them about it.

Seriously, as soon as a client sees something which has possibly been stolen from another person website, they will just assume you will screw them over and they will avoid you.

No Easy way to contact you

I love seeing a lovely portfolio with some clearly fantastic work, but it sucks when I can’t get a quote. Clients will tend not to bother poking around (or doing a WHOIS) for a way to get in touch.

Make sure you have a big “Contact me for a quote” link somewhere.

No Portfolio

Clients tend to like to see you can do to check that you can actually do what you say. Make sure you have an accessible portfolio of work. If you need to build a portfolio, do some work cheap or even free.

“So are you a company or a guy in his basement”

Be honest with clients, if you’re a one man band, tell them! Clients will not punish you for not being a large corporate company (in fact, most companies will see you as lower cost labour).

Try and make your website reflect the amount of people who you work with. In some cases being a small company (or even a sole trader) can allow you to have a blog, twitter or even be a little more informal.

Invalid Code

If your website does not work in the client’s browser (which will always be IE6, because clients are idiots) it is unlikely the client will think your worth £500 per hour. Make sure you cross browser test and use good CSS (also, advoid tables).

Below are some examples of good and bad calls to action.

Facebook

Only 2 calls to action, but the login button fit in seamlessly with the layout (not taking attention away from the sign up, especially for new users). The page also only gives the information required to know what Facebook does, sign up in 1 click and login.

Note: the “Sign Up” button is the only green button on the page (it stands out like a sore thumb).

MySpace

6 Calls to action (too many), the user is somewhat overloaded with information. The tabs are inconsistent and link to unnecessary information.

Amazon

No clear login or sign up button (Seriously Amazon, you make it look like I am logged in but I’m not). However there is only 1 clear call to action (Search).

eBay

3 calls to action, essentially “Search”, “Register” and “login”.

Useful Links

Your Web Site Needs a Clear Call to Action
10 techniques for an effective ‘call to action’
Call To Action Buttons – Does Size Matter?
Web Design – Have You Forgotten the Call to Action?