There are varying statistics out there, but most credible sources I’ve read say that 126 million Americans wear glasses. That’s pretty close to half of the population. So why should you care about who wears glasses or not?

Well in reality you shouldn’t personally care, but for the success of your website you should. Readability of your website can be a factor that you look over, when it’s really an easy problem to combat.

The first aspect of your text you’ll want to fix, or start out doing is keeping a good contract. It’s recommended that you use black text on white. However, like you can see with this site it isn’t always needed. White on black, or a really light gray look fine as well. Just remember though, keep the contrast of your text at a good level.

What can be a bit harder for some is utilizing an easy to read font. Web safe fonts are of course always your choice, but find a good size. I know many people who shrink their fonts before standard size because they think it looks better. For design purposes it might, but who cares about your design if people can’t read your content. Try and find a balance.

If you want to have people keep visiting your site, you’ll want to make sure it’s continually updated. If people think your website has become stagnant, there’s a good chance they’ll stop visiting. Most people visit sites to see if things have changed, if there is no change they’ll move on.

Conducting a redesign once every year is a good rule to follow. The reason for this is new code, or technology could come along that greatly improves your site. It could either be because of performance or design.

What you really want to keep up with is content. People might appreciate a good redesign, but what they really want to see is new content to read and comment on.

Other tips you can remember is to use new functions and element for your site. Create something interesting using javascript or CGI. You can use some scripts to track visitors and personalize their visit the next time they return.

Whatever the strategy, you want to keep things fresh. It keeps things not only interesting for your visitors, but yourself as well.

When you’ve designed your site and have it working, you’ll then begin the process of shopping around to find a host. There are a wide selection of web servers out there, with many I could recommend. Depending on your situation, certain servers will appeal to your over another.

One aspect, and keyword in the web server business you’ll want to keep an eye on is ‘uptime’. This little term has the potential to be the most important word for your web server. Uptime means the amount of time that a web server is up. Meaning, how often your website will be accessible.

Generally, you’ll see web servers advertise 99% uptime or more. While this seems like a lot, and it is, even 99% can provide a significant amount of downtime. If your server provides 99% uptime in a year, you’ll still have 3.65 days of downtime. If you’re business relies primarily on online sales that can be a big factor.

Even if you’re guranteed a certain amount of uptime, your contract could have certain clauses in it that are tricky. First, many web servers will tell you that their gurantee is for “unscheduled” outages only. So, if your server has many schedule outages then many companies won’t report those. Also, keep and eye out for how outages must be tracked. Many companies will rely on your to track your own outages. This requires software that must always be tracking, and can be quite a hassle.

There are few things that will completely drive traffic away from your site. One is navigation, which we’ve touched upon before. What can turn away visitors before they even begin navigating is when a site doesn’t load. Or has the perception that it won’t.

What causes load problems tends to be associated with media, particularly over-sized media. The funny thing is that keeping things at a decent size is quite an easy feat. Images especially. A rule of thumb to live by when dealing with images is the 30k rule. Meaning that you want to keep any image you post on a website smaller than 30k. There are exceptions to this rule, for example if you’re posting art and resolution is key to demonstrating your work. For the most part though, 30k is a good number to live by.

There are programs out there that can assist you with compression, and keeping your images at a decent size. JPEG Wizard, and GifBot are quality programs for assisting with image compression.

Other multimedia you’ll want to keep an eye on is Flash, and Java. These can be effective tools for design, but unfortunately can really bog down load times. Especially for those who have a slower internet connection. A key here is to not overuse multimedia. Don’t create your entire site in flash, when only a small widget will be effective for what you’re trying to accomplish. As with many aspects of web design, moderation is key.