Ideas for Page Design

[adapted from http://www.mlc-wels.edu/jgrunwald/page.html]

Include essential elements on each page

Any Web page may be accessed directly from another Web site, therefore each Web page needs to contain essential information which allows it to act as an independent document. This essential information is usually placed into one of three main parts of the Web page; the header , the body, or the footer (Lynch, 1997).

The header is used to bring continuity to the various pages of the Web site, as well as indicate the main topic of the particular Web page. Therefore, the header usually contains a banner graphic which ties the various Web pages of the site together, the title of the document, and navigational aids which link to other pages within the Web site.

The body contains the main textual content of the document, as well as hypertext links to other related Web sites.

The footer is used to verify the origin and authorship of the Web page. Therefore, the footer should contain the author or contact person of the site, as well as the institution with which the author is affiliated (if any), navigational links to other pages within the Web site, the date of last revision, and a statement of copyright. Other useful information might also include the author's e-mail and mailing addresses, as well as the URL of the document.

Use appropriate navigational aids

Good navigational aids are essential to good Web page design. Zimmerman (1997) points out that one way to increase the navigability of Web pages is to include "return to home page", "previous page", and "next page" links on each page. Lynch (1995), and others, suggest that local navigational links be located both at the beginning and end of the page layout so they are easily accessible to the viewer of the Web page. By including the navigational links at the end of the page, the user is not forced to return to the beginning of the Web page after browsing it in order to access another page. Another method used to increase navigability is to provide a menu or table of contents of the Web site on each Web page.

Keep page lengths short

It is usually recommended that Web page lengths not exceed two or three screens worth of information (Lynch, 1995). A major disadvantage of long Web pages is that the user needs to depend on the vertical scroll bar to navigate within the page, a process which can be disorienting to the viewer. In order to keep Web pages short, longer topics can be subdivided into logical chunks of information on separate Web pages. Individual Web pages should include only relevant, yet complete, information on a single topic.

Use appropriate text fonts and styles

Different web page browsers may display special non-standard text fonts in various ways. For this reason, Web page designers should use standard text fonts in designing Web pages (Vaughan, 1996). Lynch (1995) suggests using major HTML heading styles very sparingly and reducing header sizes in general so that more information can be displayed on the screen at one time without loosing legibility or causing over crowding to the screen layout.

Use color appropriately

Marcus (1990), McFarland (1995), and others point out that color should be used sparingly and only to highlight key elements of the page or to indicate specific functions. Just because you can view a particular color with a particular browser does not mean that others will be able to view it on their monitor with their browser. Therefore it is important to use browser-safe colors, which are also know as web-save colors.

Black is traditionally used on Web pages for the main body of text because of its legibility on a light background. Some colors are traditionally used to convey a particular meaning. Red, for example, is often used to signify danger or warning, and thus should be used sparingly to convey such meaning. Blue is traditionally used to indicate hypertext links to other Web pages, and a shade of purple to indicate links which have already been accessed by the current user. Altering these traditional color schemes will most likely confuse the new viewer to the Web site.

Keep graphics small

Graphics can effectively be used to add interest to a web page, but the amount and size of graphics should be kept to a minimum (Zimmerman, 1997). Too many graphics, or a single large graphic, can take a long time to download. Usually, using several smaller graphics, as opposed to one large one, can create a better impression for visitors to your site.