Making your website as accessible and simple as possible for your users isn’t always easy. Luckily, there are many standards and practices that visitors expect on any modern website. We’ve boiled some of these rules down to our top 12 favorites for you to use as a checklist on your current website or next big project!

1. Layout: Studies have been done that prove Web users look at the top of a page first and then work their way down the left hand side (think of a backwards 7). Try to include your important text, navigation and headings in those areas to increase their visibility.
2. Contrast: Try to choose colors for your text and background that contrast well to make it easy on the eyes. If your foreground and background colors are too similar some monitors may not display the differences well enough to make your text readable.
3. Whitespace: It’s tempting to try to include as much information on your page as possible, but overcrowding makes pages difficult to read or scan quickly. Use whitespace between paragraphs, content boxes, graphics and navigation elements to keep your pages digestable.
4. Treat Type Consistently: Keeping the sizes and typefaces you use consistent will help users read your content more easily. Headlines should be larger, body text should be in a single size, and try not to use too many different fonts.
5. Make Links Recognizable: Links should stand out from the rest of the text on your site. Common practice is to underline links and color them blue. If you don’t follow these rules, keeping the design of your links consistent will help users know what’s clickable.
6. Header: This is one of the first things a visitor sees on your site, so it needs to have a consistent design and persistent navigation on every page. Include your logo at the top left and link it to your homepage to help users quickly return home.
7. Footer: Just like your header, this area should be consistent throughout your site. Include your address, phone number, copyright info, and links to your social media profiles.
8. “About Us”: Your about page should be clear and informative. It’s the go-to page for people wanting to know more about your website and, if you’re a business, why they should use your company over another.
9. Calls-To-Action: A call-to-action is an area on your site that elicits a user interaction, like a “buy now” button or link. Make sure your actions are clear and go where promised, try replacing “click here” with “view gallery” or “see all services”.
10. Buttons on Bottom Right: People read from top left to bottom right. If you want users to move through to the next page, put your buttons or links near the bottom right. If you want users to go backward, put your buttons or links on the bottom left.
11. Clear Page Titles: If a page on your site shows the products you sell, call it your “Salon Catalog” or “Wine Tasting Menu”, not “Page 4.” This helps users when bookmarking a page and also promotes proper indexing by search engines.
12. Break Up Long Blocks Of Text: We read slower online and we read even slower still if all the content is one long paragraph. Break up your text into smaller paragraphs and use sub-heads or graphics to help users scan more easily.

I was watching Good Morning America, yesterday morning and Bob Woodruff did a profile on the band 4Troops.  The group is comprised of four U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.   I listened to their performance and I was amazed. Here are four young soldiers who served our country and are now collaborating to foster support for American veterans.

They are releasing a CD on May 25, 2010.   You can pre-order it now.  I am sure you will enjoy their music, the message in their songs, and hope you will support them.

http://www.4troopsmusic.com/

Donald A. Bambenek II, Bambenek Investigative Group

In the US, the RIAA has a huge job on its hands policing people’s computer use, but the Recording Industry Association of Japan is far more concerned with mobile phones when it comes to copyright infringement. That’s because Japanese music lovers acquire new tunes on their handsets, not from their laptops. Given this reality, it was only a matter of time before criminal charges were brought against a unauthorized mobile phone download service—something that finally happened this week (read more)