Articles

More... More What? Or the Art of Linking

When visitors first arrive on your website, they have very little sense of how big your site actually is. They are moving around in a virtual place with no sense of space or direction. Navigation is designed to guide your visitors through the hierarchy of your website. It tells them what is there, so they can quickly find what they are looking for.

An important thing to know when your filling your web pages with text, is that most visitors will spend very little time reading all this content. Instead they skim, or scan the page for something that catches their eye. They are looking for a clue, a keyword, that is relevant to the information they seek. Once they find it, or something vaguely similar, they click, and they are on to the next page.

Usability expert Steve Krug puts it like this:

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Why Your Website Needs a Privacy Policy

According to State of the Net publication by online consultancy company AMAS, 28% of leading Irish companies fail to publish a correct privacy statement on their website. Some of these companies fail to publish one at all.

A privacy policy is one of the most important documents on any website. It is a legal document that deals with your company’s procedure in handling private information about your clients, obtained through your website. A common way of collecting this information is through a contact form. Visitors have the right to know what information you are collecting and how it will be used and stored.

Many people are concerned about entering their personal details on websites because they are afraid that their private information is going to be given or sold to third parties, such as marketing companies. So to a user of your website it is important to know what is going to happen with the information they submit. That is why a transparent privacy policy will encourage trust between your business and your website visitors. If they feel confident in your privacy policy, they will be more likely to do business with you.

The Data Protection Acts of 1988 and 2003 give rights to individuals, as well as placing responsibilities on people who are collecting and processing personal data. This means that now the privacy rights of individuals are legally protected. As a data collector, you must adhere to following rules to ensure data protection:

• Obtain and process information fairly.
• Keep it only for one or more specified, explicit and lawful purposes.
• Use and disclose it only in ways compatible with these purposes.
• Keep it safe and secure.
• Keep it accurate, complete and up-to-date.
• Ensure that it is adequate, relevant and not excessive.
• Retain it for no longer than is necessary for the purpose or purposes.
• Give a copy of his/her personal data to an individual, on request.

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The Case For and Against the Use of Access Keys

Access keys are an accessibility feature that can be implemented into your web pages to make your site more accessible. They take the form of keyboard shortcuts, a combination of two or more keys, that allow an internet user to jump to a particular part of the web page or navigate from page to page in a website.

They were introduced in 1999 and are widely supported by internet browsers like Mozilla, Opera and Explorer. Their main use is to give people who can’t use a pointing device, like a mouse, an alternative way to access web pages.

People who may make use of this accessibility feature are:

• Users with restrictive movement, arthritis or those who simply cannot hold a mouse.
• Blind or visually impaired users.

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