{added more content since posting this originally}
Making your site appeal to the older surfer
The over 60’s are now getting web-able. They’ve been helped by the vast number of government schemes to learn about computing, the ease of the internet and the lower cost of computers to finally get on the internet. So it makes sense that anyone who is interested in reaching a wider audience should think about making their website appeal to the older generation of so-called ‘silver surfers’, especially if you’re hoping to use your site to sell goods.
With Freeola now established as a web host for many different sites covering a wide audience, anyone designing a new website will need to think about the competition for traffic and as Nintendo have found out with the Wii, tapping a new audience is the best way to do this.
Make it Readable
The easiest and most important aspect to encourage this age group is to make it easy to read. More and more pensioners are finding their eyesight an issue and increasing the font size to 12 or 14 points would help a great deal. The ideal font for readable text at this size is Helvetica. If you avoid using other fancy fonts for the main text (other than the title) then this will go a long way to making the site OAP-friendly.
Make the more important links and statements bold and avoid using ‘small print’ unless necessary.
If you want the user to change the font size themselves then you can add instructions such as ‘hold ctrl and move the mouse scroll wheel’ or a pop up box, which can be done by entering clear instructions with black text on white background and saving as the page popup.html in the route directory of your site. Then use the code below (thanks to Hmmm… for the popup code)
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--function myopen(filename,windowname,properties) {
mywindow = window.open(filename,windowname,properties);}// -->
</script>
<a href="javascript:myopen ('http://www.yourwebsite.com/popup.htm', 'fgpopup',
'toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,
menubar=no,scrollbars=yes, resizable=no,copyhistory=no,
width=400,height=300')" >Click to open Popup Window</a>
<a href="javascript: window.close();">close window</a>
This pop-up method may also be handy if you wish to highlight a certain item or piece of text by clearly showing it separate from the main site.
Colours
When thinking about the layout of your website, consider using lighter backgrounds with darker text where you can. Black backgrounds and light text tend to strain the eyes more.
Try to avoid using certain colours together. It’s been shown that yellows and greens or yellows and blues together tend to make the text harder to read for older web users.
Speak Up!
Link your website to http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en so that customers can enter any longer pieces of text and get the tool to read them out.
Alternatively, you can record an MP3 and use the code below to have it play out any long piece of text. Save your MP3 to the website in a 'musicfolder' directory.
<EMBED SRC= "http://domainname.com/musicfolder/music.m3u" HIDDEN="true" AUTOSTART="true" width="128" height="128"> </embed>
Understanding
Remember your audience when writing descriptions. If you use any specific technical terms then provide a glossary page on your site for people to look them up.
Look at other sites that are designed specifically for the older surfer for an indication of the language used. With any audience, not just Silver Surfers, it's better to stay away from 'flowery' language and stick to the basics.
Layout
Buttons should use only a single click rather than a double click. Try to avoid adding too much text or too many pictures to prevent the page having to be scrolled a long way down.
Make buttons or links for other pages highly visable and don’t forget to use the larger fonts for button labelling as well.
Linking
Finally, when providing links to other websites, always provide a suitable large icon to click on as well as the link itself. This will make clicking easier as well as highlighting your link.
