California may require websites to provide access to visually impaired users under ruling made in the long running case of the National Federation of the Blind vs Target.

The case centers on Target not providing basic accessibility to vision impaired users via the use of alt tags for images, keyboard options for navigation and missing navigation headers.

US District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in the Court for the Northern District of California had previously found that “the inaccessibility of Target.com impeded full and equal enjoyment of goods and services offered in Target stores” and has now ruled that the case is eligible for class action status, despite attempts by Target to have the case thrown out.

The result of the case will have far broader implications for the many startups and Web 2.0 companies operating in California, with many sites having to factor access into their services and sites or risk the prospect of legal sanctions.

Whilst the basics as easy enough: tagging images and making sure that sites can be accessed through text based browsers, the use of Ajax and other means of scripting sites means that the traditional html tagging may not either be available, or more difficult to implement.

There is some suggestion from the court case that accessibility may also be required under the Americans with Disabilities Act as well, meaning that although the ruling is currently focused on California law, it could extend to the rest of the United States.

More information on making websites accessible to those with visual impairments can be found at the American Foundation for the Blind.

If you are thinking about redesigning your web site, consider the following list of tips that I call “The Important Sevens”.  These tips will help you create a website that will work efficiently and also make your visitors happy.  Most importantly, these tips will help attract new users and customers.

Tip 1 – User Interface/Navigation

So, you have succeeded in landing the first visitors to your site. Now you need to make them go through the site. In designing your web site, it is crucial that you define your most important links. That, of course, is where you want your user to click. In most cases it’s at the top of your page, or on the far left that users tend to look at. Keep those important links uniform to the rest of the site. This will allow the user to easily navigate and go where you want them to.

Tip 2 – Site Optimization

A quick loading site is the way to go.  A common problem I see frequently is that you have this amazing looking site, but it takes too long to load.  Even with today’s technology in broadband and fast connections, a slow loading site can force a visitor to not even bother and go somewhere else.  Don’t place “heavy” graphics all over your site.  This is usually the primary cause of a site taking more than 10 seconds to load.

• Optimize your code.
• Limit the amount of graphics.
• Favor text links over graphical buttons. Text links can still look great by using CSS code.
• Spread your content.

Tip 3 – Layout – The Clean, the Busy, the White Space

There can be many arguments about what truly defines “White Space”.  What are elements that clutter a page? Large amounts of graphics, one too many types of fonts, oversized ad banners, and too many colors.  Shoot for a clean and non-busy page.  If you achieve the right amount of organization with white space, you can give your site a sense of cleanliness and well defined neatness.  Spread your content out. If you have a page that contains an excessive amount of content, split it out to another page.  Keep it simple.  Deliver a powerful impression to your visitors that they are browsing a professional page that is easy to read and navigate.

Tip 4 – Cross Browser Performance

Cross Browser Performance is an important issue to deal with. We all know that the popular Internet Explorer is usually the browser most commonly used.  In my early days of designing and building sites I would only test my site using Internet Explorer. I soon learned the hard way that users were getting errors in other browsers.  This opened my eyes to Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera, Safari, and other various web browsers. It is important to remember that not everyone uses only one browser. This, sometimes, can make it tricky when you are coding your site.  Be sure to test in multiple browsers. One line may look good in Internet Explorer, but in Firefox, that line can be in the middle of your page, off positioning your graphics, and fumbling the success of the design. Our nextSTAT product has a browser report that will tell you the web browsers being used by your visitors.  Make sure you’re catering to everyone!

Tip 5 – Resolution Sizes

In today’s market, there are several resolution sizes that are commonly used worldwide.  They range from the original 800×600 to sizes 1600×1200 and beyond. Don’t forget widescreen sizes. When building your site this is an important factor to always keep in mind. You will want to design and build your site so that it works and, most importantly, looks good at all of those resolutions. Try to use percentages instead of pixels.  Again, nextSTAT has a report that will tell you which Screen Resolutions are being used to view your site.  Use this data to improve your visitors’ experience!

Tip 6 – Fonts

Have you ever loaded a site with large bold bright yellow fonts on a white background?  Ever seen a site that uses fonts so small you have to turn your zoom cam on?  Avoid making fonts too large or too small. It’s not professional and can easily turn a future customer or visitor away. Get back to the basics and keep it simple.  Try and use one set of fonts for the entire site that is readable by your target audience.  A rule I like to stick with is “No more than one”. Stick with fonts that are recognized by all computers.  Fonts like Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, are generally safe to use.  Fancy fonts might look good on your machine, but have the potential of looking completely different on another.

Tip 7 – Links

Some of my most frustrating internet experiences have occurred when browsing a site and finding a dead end or a broken link.  You spend precious time trying to find the page you want to access, but instead get a headache.  Ensure your entire set of links go where they were destined to.  Avoid sending your users into a loop of never ending “click here’s”.  Keep it straight and get them to the page they’re looking for as fast as possible.

Remember we all want to make our visitors happy.  Consider these tips the next time you create a site.  Keep it simple, keep it clean, and deliver a powerful, professional looking site.

“An alert reader, SentryWatch, commented per my last blog that the Terms of Service posted on the Google Docs and Spreadsheets site assigns content rights of anything saved on Doc and Spreadsheets to Google. It’s almost too incredible to believe, so here’s the wording from the mighty Google maw itself:”

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The old nursery rhyme that asks of Mistress Mary “how does your garden grow?” might ask the same question of you: “how does your website grow?”  A website is much like a garden.  It takes regular attention, pruning, weeding, and trial and error analysis to make it a success.  In the end you become a master gardener with the skills you need to succeed.  On a website, we are interested in similar methods to measure success:  how traffic is growing? how many “tomatoes” are picked? and what we can do to increase our yields?  How do you know if your website is successful?  What should you measure?  The answer is not a simple one.  What you measure depends on what you want to know.  For those of you who need a little nudge in the right direction, here are some things you can do to get started:

1.  Identify who has a stake in the success or failure of the website.

The success of your company’s website should not only be on the shoulders of the person who designs or manages it.  You need to know who in your company cares about and has a vested interest in its success.  If no one cares, then the battle is lost before it is even fought.  The people in your company who care about your site enough to complain about it should be on the team willing to take some responsibility for it.

2. Identify the goals of those who have a stake in the success or failure of the website.

Next, find out what the team members want.  This involves determining what they expect out of the website for the company, for their departments, and for themselves. This should be a group effort involving everyone who has a stake in the site’s success.  You’ll need to meet together and discuss a comprehensive list of objectives, goals, and aspirations.

3. Identify the most important visitors to your website.

The most important visitors will differ from site to site.  Some people will want to know visitors that return the most frequently, stay the longest, view the most web pages, buy the most product, or spend the most money.  Almost everyone will agree that that the most important visitor is the one who is profitable.  But your definition of “profitable” may vary, depending on what you are trying to accomplish.  If you do not sell anything, for instance, but you want visitors to download a certain file, then your most important visitor will be different than those who are trying to sell a product.

4. Identify the goals of your website’s visitors.

What are your visitors trying to accomplish on your site?   What do they expect from your site?  This may or may not match your own company’s goals.  All visitors should expect a positive user experience — a website that is easy to use and reasonably fast.  Nothing will turn away users faster than a slow or complicated website.  If your visitors are trying to purchase something, is your site making it easy to accomplish?  Are you losing customers during the buying/signup process?  Tools like nextSTAT or WebSTAT can help you answer such questions.

5. Prioritize your team’s goals.

Now that you know what everyone wants you can start discussing the priority of everyone’s goals.  While not everyone may be pleased with the outcome, you will at least get everyone with a stake in the site involved in identifying, discussing, and hammering out a priority list.  That way everyone will understand why things are being done the way they are and where their “pet goal” fits in the grand scheme.  Some of these goals will be compatible with others, while others will not.  For example, what is more important, increasing revenue or improving customer satisfaction?  You may have to temporarily give up one to work on another.

6. Identify the most important metrics.

Now that the hard part is completed, you will need to identify which metrics can help you measure what you are trying to accomplish.  Services like nextSTAT or WebSTAT have a whole array of tools that can be used to evaluate the success of your goals.  Are you trying to increase traffic? visitors? clickthroughs? downloads? sales?  conversions?  Perhaps your goal involves several different metrics.  Involve your team in identifying the methods you think should be used to measure what you are trying to accomplish.

7. Identify the web analytics partners that have the technology to help you measure your goals.

Does your current web analytics partner have the capability of measuring what you are trying to measure?  If you are trying to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising as it relates to sales, for example, you will want an analytics package that will allow you to track both your advertising expenditures and sales revenues to help you assess whether your advertising is working or not.  A simple “web counter” type service is not going to be of much assistance at this level of analysis.

8. Use web analytics reports judiciously.

Too much data can be overwhelming and therefore unhelpful.  Determine the reports that speak to the goals you are trying to accomplish and only distribute those reports to your team of stakeholders.  It is certainly helpful if your web analytics provider has flexible reports or filtering capabilities that can help tailor your reports to your needs.

9. Make website changes incrementally.

A major site redesign can be disruptive to the measuring process.  All too often web designers make major changes to a website without thinking about how the changes might affect the headway you are making in measuring certain goals.  The more changes made all at once, the more difficult it is to determine cause and effect.  If, for example, you decide to replace your entire site with a fancy new one and find that traffic and sales decrease, how will you know exactly what caused the decline?  Don’t be afraid to make small tweaks and then wait for a time to see if they are working. 

10.  How does your garden grow?

You have a team, and know your goals.  You have the tools to measure your progress, and pretty reports to show team members.  Make sure that you use this information as part of a process of continual improvement.  The whole reason for this exercise is to help you measure your web site’s success.  Don’t let your garden get out of control.  Keep pruning, weeding, and measuring your yields.  You’ll find that before long you will be a master gardener with a healthy, thriving website.