Design Issues

Getting information coded, onto a web server, and across tens of thousands of miles of Internet is easy. The hard part is designing the pages so that the information travels the final 18 inches from the reader's screen into their understanding. In the Information Age, your information competes with gigabytes of other information, and it competes by being

inviting,
easy to scan, and
easy to understand

Here are a few tips for designing your web pages.

1. Goals, Goals, Goals Always consider your goals first. Also consider them last. Anything that you can do in the design of your web pages that helps you accomplish your goals is good design. What you want to accomplish with your website will always outweigh the rest of these suggestions.

2. Use images deliberately If an image does not help you accomplish your goals, then don't use it. Images cost your web customers time. The degree to which your images support your goals must be worth the page loading time that they cost.
Keep images small, both in terms of disk space and the geographic space that they take up on your website. Scanned photographs and pictures from digital cameras tend to be smaller (file size) if they are saved as JPEG files. Pictures drawn with a graphics program tend to be smaller if they are saved as GIFs.

4. Use white space White space is not the absence of information. It is a positive element that you use to arrange information on the page. White space draws attention to information by setting it apart.
Carefully arranged white space also gives a web page a polished and professional look. Along with small and well designed border images, white space can be used to give a web page a graphic-intensive look, without taking a minute and a half to load.

5. Information layout and presentation -- design for scanning Most people do not come to the Internet to read. They come to the Internet to learn. If they want to read, they curl up by a fire with a good book.
When people view a web page they scan rather than read from top to bottom. When designing your pages, design for scanning. Identify text that your customers might be looking for and bold the text, or color it, or make it a different size. You want to distinguish the text from the surrounding information so that it will draw the scanning eye.
Using hanging indents is an effective way to design for scanning. Headings and subheadings should be bold, perhaps larger, but justified to the left of the screen (headings should not be centered). The text beneath the headings should be indented such that the scanning eye easily picks up the headings.

6. Menu size Try to keep your page menus to less than seven items. People are less likely to read a long menu, thus preventing them from visiting valuable links from your page. If menus offer fewer than seven options, then people are more likely to read them and to link to the information that will help them solve their problem.
If you need to have more than six options from a single page then have more than one menu listing. Select the most important options, the ones that would be most relevant to most of your readers, and make them a main menu with large and bold text. This is the menu that will draw the reader's eye. If they see value in your website from this main menu, then their eyes will wander to other menu listings.

7. Page size Working a mouse is work. The less you make people use their mouse, the happier they are and the more positively they take your information. This requires that you make lots of decisions regarding page size. Your choices frequently are having a long web page that forces the reader to scroll and scroll down the page, or having lots of short pages, requiring the reader to click options from a menu.
Usually it is preferable to have smaller pages. They are easier to manage for the reader and give a greater sense of organization. However there are two very good reasons to go with longer pages. If the nature of the information and its use might cause the reader to scan the page for occurrences of specific words or phrases, then the long page has an advantage. The reader can use the Find feature that is in most browsers to search the entire content of the page for the word or phrase.
Another advantage of longer pages is the ability to print them. If the information is such that people would want to have a printed copy, then they can print the single long page once. If the information is divided into several shorter pages, then the user will have to print that many times.
Another important consideration is the fact that most people do not scroll down a web page…at all. Their decision to scroll depends on what they see at the top of the page. Therefore, the top six inches of your web page is the most crucial part. This is where you place your hook. This is where you advertise the information, convincing the reader that he or she should scroll further.

1.	Goals, Goals, Goals	Always consider your goals first. Also consider them last. Anything that you can do in the design of your web pages that helps you accomplish your goals is good design. What you want to accomplish with your website will always outweigh the rest of these suggestions.
2.	Use images deliberately	If an image does not help you accomplish your goals, then don't use it. Images cost your web customers time. The degree to which your images support your goals must be worth the page loading time that they cost. Keep images small, both in terms of disk space and the geographic space that they take up on your website. Scanned photographs and pictures from digital cameras tend to be smaller (file size) if they are saved as JPEG files. Pictures drawn with a graphics program tend to be smaller if they are saved as GIFs.
4.	Use white space	White space is not the absence of information. It is a positive element that you use to arrange information on the page. White space draws attention to information by setting it apart. Carefully arranged white space also gives a web page a polished and professional look. Along with small and well designed border images, white space can be used to give a web page a graphic-intensive look, without taking a minute and a half to load.
5.	Information layout and presentation -- design for scanning	Most people do not come to the Internet to read. They come to the Internet to learn. If they want to read, they curl up by a fire with a good book. When people view a web page they scan rather than read from top to bottom. When designing your pages, design for scanning. Identify text that your customers might be looking for and bold the text, or color it, or make it a different size. You want to distinguish the text from the surrounding information so that it will draw the scanning eye. Using hanging indents is an effective way to design for scanning. Headings and subheadings should be bold, perhaps larger, but justified to the left of the screen (headings should not be centered). The text beneath the headings should be indented such that the scanning eye easily picks up the headings.
6.	Menu size	Try to keep your page menus to less than seven items. People are less likely to read a long menu, thus preventing them from visiting valuable links from your page. If menus offer fewer than seven options, then people are more likely to read them and to link to the information that will help them solve their problem. If you need to have more than six options from a single page then have more than one menu listing. Select the most important options, the ones that would be most relevant to most of your readers, and make them a main menu with large and bold text. This is the menu that will draw the reader's eye. If they see value in your website from this main menu, then their eyes will wander to other menu listings.
7.	Page size	Working a mouse is work. The less you make people use their mouse, the happier they are and the more positively they take your information. This requires that you make lots of decisions regarding page size. Your choices frequently are having a long web page that forces the reader to scroll and scroll down the page, or having lots of short pages, requiring the reader to click options from a menu. Usually it is preferable to have smaller pages. They are easier to manage for the reader and give a greater sense of organization. However there are two very good reasons to go with longer pages. If the nature of the information and its use might cause the reader to scan the page for occurrences of specific words or phrases, then the long page has an advantage. The reader can use the Find feature that is in most browsers to search the entire content of the page for the word or phrase. Another advantage of longer pages is the ability to print them. If the information is such that people would want to have a printed copy, then they can print the single long page once. If the information is divided into several shorter pages, then the user will have to print that many times. Another important consideration is the fact that most people do not scroll down a web page…at all. Their decision to scroll depends on what they see at the top of the page. Therefore, the top six inches of your web page is the most crucial part. This is where you place your hook. This is where you advertise the information, convincing the reader that he or she should scroll further.