Website Building - Establishing Guidelines

Case Study Article 8

If you are thinking of designing your own website then there are some rules you should keep in mind as you work. If this were a design class then I would fully expect some bright spark to put their hand up now and say 'but I thought the best designs were the ones that broke the rules'. There is, of course, an element of truth in that observation but my answer would be simple - you need to know and understand the rules before you can effectively break them. If you don't know the rules then how can you know if you are following them or breaking them? But perhaps 'rules' isn't the right word; how about 'guidelines' or 'principles'? What I am going to outline here are two basic essentials of designing an effective website based which, if you keep them in mind they will serve you well. Focus on the user's needs, and deliver your content according to its requirements.

So you have a topic, and now you want to design a site based upon that topic. You have researched your competitors' sites to see what they are doing and you have decided whether you are going to create an e-commerce store, an information site, a blog or a 'magazine' type site: There are many different kinds of site, each with its own set of conventions and it's worth spending some time surfing the internet and getting a feel for just how many different roles a website can undertake so you know exactly which model you are using. The next thing to do is to sit down and design your site - with that in mind, here are some design guidelines which you should keep in mind as you work.

After deciding on your topic and the kind of site you are going to create, the main element that will help to decide the look of your site is what content you have. Of course, if you are creating a gardening tips site then your content will be images and articles on gardening; but think about what kind of images they are and what style the articles are written in. The content you put on your site is, together, what represents the character of your site and any design you apply to hold it all together needs to represent that content. For example, if your pictures were all glossy and professional and your articles all formal and sensible, then the appearance of your site would need to reflect that. You'd create something slick and professional looking to reflect the content and the overall impression, if its consistent, is what your visitor will respond to and remember. In fact, this principle is at the core of 'branding' and the design of your site 'brands' your content - if there is a mismatch between site design and content your appeal will suffer.

This leads on to my next point which is: you should always remember you are designing for your user and not for you. People often have a difficulty with this idea since, they argue, 'it is my site, I'm the best one to know how it should work'. The best answer to this is to say that if you want people to visit your site, and come back again, then you need to appreciate your visitors' point of view: always keep in mind the user's needs and expectations.

When you are first thinking about the look and feel of your site you may be sketching some idea on a notepad, or trying some things out on your computer; but you must always be aware that the destination for your design is a computer monitor. It is not there to be printed out and it's not going to be a book or printed magazine. One of the main issue which comes out of this essential fact is that printed media are linear, and websites are non linear,. You don't flick through pages or follow a story from one page to another. The editorial isn't the first page someone looks at and the adverts aren't at the back - you may design the site with that format or hierarchy in mind but once the site is live your visitors don't all land on the same page. And they don't visit your pages in the order you want them to. You need to design with this core feature in mind. Make it interactive. Create a navigation system which encourages the user to make their own journey through your site. Create hyperlinks and menu bars which are easy to find and use. Give your user options to follow whatever path they want; this is how the internet works and if you try to impose a linear structure on this non linear medium your users will get frustrated and move on. This is a user need and you have to make your content available in this way.

If you keep these two basic principles in mind as you work then much of your decisions can be made for you. As a designer you will often find yourself looking at different options and become uncertain which is the better one to use. With guidelines such as these you create, for yourself, a mediator for these kinds of dilemmas. Ask yourself: which of these two options will most suit the user? Which of these two options best reflects the content? You may, of course, engage your personal taste in the matter but with this caution - if your personal taste doesn't correspond with the user's needs or the requirements of the content then it may not be the right time to exercise it.