Website design basics

I have been a great admirer of neat and simple design. To me a website is just a way of putting across the product/service to the target audience. I have had some discussions (you can call it arguments) with my colleagues regarding design issues that our website design needs to be simple, communicative and easy to navigate. If our users are not able to locate the information they are looking for, then we have failed. Graphic designers try to showcase their capabilties forget about the purpose of the website thus harming the cause for which website is made.

Few pointers :
How designers look at web pages
• appreciate balance, depth, richness, and surprises
• enjoy looking at designs
• stare long and hard at the complete screen
How real people use web pages
• move quickly because they don’t like looking at the screen
• impatient - they tend to click the first promising link, and often don’t wait for pages to finish loading
• don’t like to read, scanning text quickly for clues
• looking for things to help them do what they want to do