One of the fastest growing populations of computer users and information seekers on the internet are the people over 60 years old, also known as the “Silver Surfers”. They’re also often the ones with the money to spend on the internet, so it may be well worthwhile to keep the older population in mind when design your web site. This article includes tips and ideas for designing your web site to be Silver-Surfer-friendly. It will discuss:

• Font choices
• Color choices
• Links
• Using images
• Layout
• Advertising

Font choice

Most 20-something year old web designers often produce web site designs that are not Silver-Surfer-friendly. Although the web site may be visually pleasing with cutting edge design, the font choices often result in text that is difficult, if not impossible, to read.

As many are aware, the older you get, the less perfect your eyesight and the less tolerant you become with web sites that force you to concentrate and focus to read. The following tips will increase the readability and usability of a web page.

• Use a sans serif* font like Arial, Verdana or Helvetica
• Use a minimum font size of 12 pt for text, 10 pt for links
• Express your font size in pt, % or em to allow browsers to zoom in (avoid using px)
• Use a medium to bold font weight
• Reserve underline for links
• Use left justification

* Put simply, “serifs” are the little flicks at the end of each character in fonts such as Times New Roman or Courier. Therefore, sans serif are characters without the flicks, like Arial, Verdana and Helvetica.

Click here for a list of web-safe fonts.

Color choices

Color choices of fonts and backgrounds can greatly affect the readability of your web page. In general, use a dark font on a light background or a light font on a dark background (the first is produces greater readability).

Contrast between text and background is also important, too much or too little contrast reduces readability drastically. Don’t use a pure white against pure black, instead, use off-white and off-black together to soften the contrast and increase readability. At the same time, remember to watch out for too little contrast between text and background. Using light to mid gray text on white background would not create enough contrast to make the text readable.

Color choices for links are also important in helping Silver Surfers distinguish what is a clickable link, and what is not. In general, ALWAYS underline links and ALWAYS use different colors for a link, a visited link and a hover or active link. The standards are as follows:

• Links : Blue
• Visited links : Purple
• Hover links : Red
• Active links : Red

At the minimum, use different colors for each type of link. The best option to reduce confusion is to keep the link colors as close as possible to the standard colors.

Links

As mentioned in the above points, links should:

• be a minimum of 10 pt
• use the standard link colors of blue for a link, purple for a visited link and red for a hover/active link

Additional guidelines to help avoid confusion and frustration for Silver Surfers and increase their satisfaction of using your web site are:

• avoid drop down lists and roll over links
• avoid a large link list
• space out links with white space (use CSS line-height)

The hands of a Silver Surfers may not be as steady as they once were, so using drop down lists, roll over lists and huge lists of small font sized links can promote miss-clicks, resulting in further frustration while using your web site.

Using images

Using images are a great way to illustrate the point or message of an article. Images are also very useful for sites that sell products. When using images, always remember to use clear images of a moderate size. Thumbnail images for products should be large enough to see details.

Remember, the eyesight of Silver Surfers isn’t what it use to be, and neither is their patience or tolerance. Presenting small, fuzzy thumbnail images and forcing them to go to the detail page just to see a larger image with more detail may lose you sales as the frustration sets in for the visitor.

Layout

The layout of a web page determines the usability of the web site. To design with the Silver Surfer in mind, keep the layout clean and simple.

So what constitutes clean and simple layout? The following list outlines points to remember for a clean and simple layout.

• Use lots of white space - you can’t ever have enough white space!
• Use a consistent layout, eg
  • keep your menu in the same place on each page
  • keep the menu items the same on each page
  • use the same font family, font size and font colors throughout the web site
  • use the same background color throughout the web site
• Avoid overuse of colors - keep the number of colors down to a minimum
• Avoid too much movement on the page
  • keep the page as static as possible
  • avoid using animated gifs and flash animations
• Avoid large link lists
  • keep link lists short and adequately spaced

Clean and simple layout for web sites that sell products also includes easy to find prices. Don’t force visitors to hunt for the price of your products, keep them easy to find. Points to remember about prices:

• Use an adequate font size
• Use a different color for your prices than for your product descriptions and headings
• Put the price in an easy to find location on the page, eg, next to the image and near the “Buy” / “Add to Cart” button.

Advertising

Web sites should pay for themselves (at the very least) and one way to achieve this is by presenting adverts to your visitors with the aim to entice them to click on the ad and generate some income. As with any advertising material, it needs to be targeted to your audience. Inappropriate advertising can lose visitors, and Silver Surfers are no exception. Using advertising that’s targeted at younger visitors may result in the loss of older visitors as they feel the web site is “not for them”. It’s best to choose advertising that’s universally appealing or specifically targeted to the theme of your web page.