Effective Website Structure

Structure, Layout and Design Elements

Before you begin to add content to your website there are a few technical issues that need to be covered (we are dealing with computers after all, so we need to get technical!) There are three technical elements to consider with your web site: structure, design and layout.

Let’s start with structure.  Once your website in online, you will want people to find it, therefore, you will need to submit it to search engines and directories (such as Google or Yahoo).  Sites without a proper structure or rich content are not usually picked up when a person enters in their search terms.  Search engines (e.g. Google) use computer software to “crawl” your site looking for content in the form of key words and links.  By doing this, they are able to rank order relevant websites related to specific search terms.  Therefore, your site should make it easy for this software to analyze your content.  Research has shown that a three tier web site is most friendly to this software.  A three tier web site is structured in a way that each of its three levels gets progressively more detailed about the subject matter.  Think in terms of this organizational chart.

This structure helps your design progress in a logical fashion so that it is more search-engine friendly as well as easier for your target audience to use.  There is no limit to the number of tier two and three pages you can have.

Layout & Design

The right layout and design increases the likelihood that your site will be included in a directory and that it will be found easily by users.  Directories (e.g. Yahoo) use human beings to evaluate site submissions therefore, appearance is important as well as content and structure.  If your site looks good to the folks evaluating your site, next they look at the content and structure.  Remember, most people read websites beginning at the top right hand corner, work across the top and down the left side. (This is opposite of newspaper & newsletter design).  If they don’t see what they are looking for, they will likely move on.

With this in mind you might want to forego fancy drop down link menus and have very simple and descriptive links on the left side of the page instead. 

Most of your important information should be above the fold (i.e. visible on the screen without much scrolling) on your home page.

Browser compatibility (how your site looks through Internet Explorer compared to Firefox is probably the most frustrating of all issues.  If you are not using a site building program it will be difficult to check the appearance of your site in different browser settings. However, you can check your site using different screen resolution settings on your computer, it’s not foolproof, but it will give you a pretty good idea as to what your site will look like in various browsers.

Colors

Your color scheme should be pleasing and restful to the eye.  Keep these other factors in mind: watch that your links do not appear to be washed-out in the background color, there should be a good contrast; and, be aware of how this site will appear to someone who is color-blind, or visually impaired in some other way. Avoid color schemes such as red on green and avoid the use of fixed-sized fonts which cannot be increased by the user in the browser view choices

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