An Introduction To Websites With a little of help from “WebPages That Suck

3 Categories of Website Business –To make money –Eg Information –To disseminate information or opinions –Eg Ego –A personal webpage

Business Site - Guidelines –looks professional branded Eg no spelling errors –easy to navigate Divide content into logical groupings –Informative What does the company do, can the user tell this from the front page Contact information on every page –marketed properly Search engine submissions Suit the target audience –quick to load More than a breath go somewhere else

Who is the target audience? Identify Current customers Potential customers What are their information requirements? How can you best present this information? What are possible paths the target audience may take?

Homepage Often first page a user visits so it is very important. It should: –Fast to download –Clearly display “Sites purpose” –Contain navigation –Look professional

Navigation navigation tools –texts –Graphics –both Consistency (type, position, links)

Text Content is King Must be easy to read –Font size, face, color & background color Scannable –Generally people scan not read –Bullet points –Summarise text If there is too much text: –add graphics –Allow user to print and or download the document

Graphics Don’t use them unless they look really good Keep the graphics file size small –ie jpeg or gif Use blocks of color instead Careful of background images –text must be easy to read Use image descriptions - (Alt parameter) Do you need animated GIFs –Don’t use them for the sake of animation

Sound Is it necessary?

Good web design… Consider: Planning 1 - site map split the content into logical sections Planning 2 – page layout How each page will look Planning 3 – Content guide Page content Carefully select text and graphic Browser Support eg IE and NN Hardware support Different screen resolution, download speeds

Creating a Web page or site WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get –Eg dreamweaver, frontpage –What you design on-screen will (should) appear in a browser window Raw HTML code –Homesite, Notepad