Forum Moderators: phranque
I was just wondering on the consensus of how wide I should or rather could make my pages and still be within acceptable standards.
FH
but there can't ever be a hard and fast rule about it, as it will depend on what kind of site you've got and what kind of visitors you are attracting.
the only real way of knowing which is best is to look at your own server logs. if your server logs say the vast majority are at 1024, then design for that. but if you've still got a sizeable chunk on 800, then maybe it would be best to stick with that for a while.
Unfortunately the site doesn't exist right now so we are not sure what type of audience we are attracting. It is for a high end bathroom supply house, so my guess would be that the audience are people with piles of cash to spend on a bathroom. Therefore I suppose it isn't a large leap forward to assume this group has modern monitors with higher resolutions.
Also because the site doesn't exist right now we have no server logs to look at to be sure. I guess I can go with 1024 and take my chances. They want a more panoramic look to the page that I seem to only be able to achieve by going wider and keeping the height shallow.
If there are other thoughts on this please share them.
FH
some are fixed-width 800, and some are fixed-width 1000. there are also quite a few liquid layouts that stretch to fit whatever.
but maybe that is a good thing for you -- do some user-testing on the competitors sites. spend some time getting a load of people to visit all those different kind of designs, some at 800, and some at 1024, and see which people found each site easiest to use. because they will have the same kind of things on the site that you will. and that is at least something concrete you can go back to your client with as well, because they always like to know that there's sound reasoning behind it.
I have another site, though, where forcing the information into an 800px width just looked ugly. I redesigned that site last fall and put into a 1000px width, and I'm much happier with it. I find it much more easy to use and visually pleasing. The information on that site just begs to be presented more horizontally than vertically.
One of the things to keep in mind is not just how much of your traffic is likely to be visitors with 800x600 resolution, but how many people using computers that old to force them to use that resolution are likely to buy things online? I don't know that answer.
FH
