Sites That Make Sense

Context is the whole picture of your site: What it’s about, howyou navigate through the different pages, the information aboutyour business, and of course the graphics. You are creating anenvironment for the visitor through your choices for theseaspects of a website. This environment you create determines themessage you are sending and how a visitor might experience andfeel about your site. The type of business or site subject inpart determines what context is best for you. Context is oftenthe least considered factor for new designers. Context is the”glue” that builds your site into one significant message toimpart to your visitors and how that message is understood.

This glue holds together all the aspects of your site: theusability, download times, text, graphics, the look and feel,interactivity, and other aspects. Some expamples of context arethe differences between a site for a bank and a site forcomputer games. A bank site is usually conservative with formaltextual content and very businesslike graphics whereas a gamesite will be upbeat, usually a lot of neons and flashy brightcolors and informal textual content. Getting the idea? Thesesites work well within their contexts but never shall the twainmeet. Banks are serious business, game sites are all about fun.You want your bank to take you seriously don’t you? Whereas youwant to be entertained on a game site.

When planning your website, the best place to start is with atext document or pen and paper if you are more comfortable withthose instrument, and design it from the top down. Designingfrom top down gives you the opportunity to decide what messageyou want to impart to your readers for the end result. After youhave decided that, you can begin to fill in the steps from theoverall picture to the smallest detail of your site. This partof site building can take weeks of planning before the first webpage is ever made while other sites start out with an initialideal and evolve from that ideal.

Items to consider when planning your website are: Font color andtype Should be consistent and appropriate to the site. onething I hear a lot among designers about this issue is the useof comic sans font this font is generally regarded asunprofessional and while it has appropriate uses such as in funsites it’s not a very good font overall. For most sites it’sbest to stick to something that is easily readable such as sansserif. Color is also a sticky point. I’ve seen sites that canuse bright colors and it works and other sites where it failsabysmally. For instance, using a bright bright yellow text coloron a black background.. it hurts the eyes and is guaranteed tosend your visitors away sooner than you might want them to leave.

Linking and navigation Links should be in the same place oneach page. Whether you use buttons, drop down menus, or textlinks they should be consistent and in the same place throughoutyour site. Include links that your visitors can use, not justlinks you find interesting.

Logo Your logo is your brand or trademark for your companywhether it is product or service oriented. Each page should havethe same logo.

Textual Content Site Title: The site title shows at the top ofthe browser bar when a visitor comes to your site. A site’stitle should not only contain the full name of a site(if itdiffers from your domain name but also some descriptiveinformation about your site. For instance, Designers Edge’stitle not only contains the site name but also that is it asite about web design, free graphics, and 3d art. Should containwhat you want the readers to understand about your site.Headings and descriptions. Headings are your way of drawingattention to a particular section of textual content. Theyshould be simple, complete, and consistent. They should give agood summary of the textual content over which they preside.

Graphical Content Backgrounds and other graphics used should fitwith the textual content. Think back to the bank and game sitescomparison. Finding free graphics or making your own is easierwhen you think about what will fit your site and the message youare trying to send.

Do looks counts? In a word: YES. The way your page looks isvital to how effectively it does its job. Think about sites inthe following contexts:

Plain = uninteresting: If the site is too plain, people won’t beinterested and may not stick around long enough to get to theimportant information.

Busy = disorienting: If the page is a riot of images and colors,people may be overwhelmed and visit another site just to givetheir eyes a rest. Likewise for lots of animations no matter howthey are colored or the topic of them. They distract the eyesfrom the important stuff of your site.. what you do, why you doit, and why you do it online.

Pastels can be positive or negative. Pastels generally areassociated with the feminine or with babies. Think about colorsand meanings associated with them. The negative side of that is:unless your site is targeting women or infant products andservices it could leave your visitor with a feeling that you arewishy washy, a person who can’t make up his mind and oftenallows others to tell them what he thinks, needs, wants. Inreality that may not be the way you are but perception is 100%of the total picture here. People don’t want to do business withsomeone who might not be the person they need to be dealingwith.. they want to know who is in control. Others might try totake advantage of these people thinking that if they areforceful enough they can get more for less than the going rate.

Dark colors can also be positive or negative. They can bepercieved as shady and dishonest, or used as backgrounds to pullout the textual and graphical content of the page while blendinginto the background as they are intended to do. Too much darkleaves a person in the dark, while a healthy blend of dark andlight(light not bright, there’s a difference) brings out thelighter qualities to a better effect sometimes and adds depth topages that use one main color in the theme.

Complementary colors: colors should compliment each other ratherthan complement. Putting the wrong colors together can be justas disorienting as a busy site and often construed the same way.Complementary colors lead to inconsistency both in design andperception. Complementary colors are exact opposites and usingtoo many of them creates a loud brassy noise… who are youyelling at? Why are you yelling? Won’t your product stand onit’s own value or are you trying to distract from the fact thatit’s substandard but you still want to make dollars? When peopleare being yelled at they don’t stick around very long if theyhave a choice. Contrasting colors on the other hand cancompliment each other and give depth to your pages. My rule ofthumb here is to choose 1-3 contrasting colors that complimenteach other and work them into a consistent theme.

At this point you can see why some sites are weeks in planningbefore the first page is ever made. Even with all that, youstill have to live with the site as you will visit it yourselfat least once a day. Hopefully you’ll visit it more often thanthat but do so at least once. Also after all this planning andcareful mapping out just what you want your site to be, you willcontinually tweak and update the look and feel of your page.Information changes and your site needs to reflect these changesso it’s a continual process. In addition, some sites need tomake seasonal changes as their products or services change withthe seasons.

About the author:Stephanie Cordray is owner of http://www.totalweb-inc.com andhttp://www.jc-hosting.net . She can be reached by emailing:scordray@totalweb-inc.com . In addition she operates severalfree resource sites: http://www.writingwise.comhttp://www.designer-edge.com http://www.v-chatterbox.nethttp://www.webmastersforum.org