The ‘good website’

Creating a website is easy, just fire up your favourite WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor and throw the content in, add a little violent array of colour and publish to the web. Well done, you just took up useful space with a useless piece.

What makes the ‘good website’?
To answer it in as few words as possible would undermine the whole idea of the good website. Every little aspect needs to be intruded and revealed, in order to show just exactly what it is that makes the good website. In order to keep confusion to a minimum, I have separated this part into 4 simple categories, that I have found are essential in the birth of the good website. The percentages of the categories is explained afterwards.

50% Design:
The design of a website involves everything that is graphical, in any sense, and white space. This also encapsulates anything that can be positioned within the page, including text. However, try not to get confused. The actual text block within a page is considered as design, but the content of the text and its purpose is classed as content (next point).

Design is an essential part of a website, and seeing as though it takes so much in, rightly so. It is also the part that takes a lot of work, perhaps most of the time in the new media industry is designing, because we are always questioning our ability to create something that other people like, and will be able to use. Also, we want our designs to often reflect our personalities, emotions or similar personal effects, and joining the two can often reflect badly. But sometimes, we decide that a totally different route is needed. Something that is very common between web designers of today; simplicity. Often, this method of design is overlooked, not surprising really, because in a sense some clients want messy, busy or damn-right roller-coaster ride sites. And this can mess with our minds. But we have to step back once-in-a-while and say no. I want freedom. This is where the real design and emotion comes from. Simplicity may seem, pretty simple, but it can be a very daunting task. 5 pixel borders and 75 pixel image holders may seem pretty simple, but what about things like the content holders, the header or even the menu for that matter? Well, I have decided that some top tips are in order.
• Horizontal menus are not advised. Why? Because they are harder to update and there is only so much that can be added to it. Vertical menus on the other hand are limitless and take less effort to make. This accentuates the feeling of simplicity.
• Headers are a nightmare. Literally. I don’t know about you, but when it comes to headers, I prefer to make them at the end. It saves a lot of pain. When you have your layout, colour scheme and all the other dibs and dabs pulled together, you will find it a lot easier to come up with a header. Many people, me included prefer to have a simple header that has a simple gradient of either ‘Satin’ or ‘Linear’ with one colour, just at different tones.

• Colour schemes. Try to keep the number of colours at either 3 or 5. This helps to make it easier on the eyes (eye-candy), and most people that use the Internet are Visual Learners, which means colour is good (for the most part). Don’t colour text. Keep it white or black (depending on element background-colour). Finally, don’t overpower links with colour. Keep the visited, link colours the same and the active, hover the same.
• Keep clutter to a minimum. There is nothing worse than coming across a website that looks as though it has been rampaged by a squad of rhinos. Modular designs are often the best to apply to this, but are sometimes misused. In order to reduce clutter, put every element in logical order. Don’t have the header, then the content, then the menu, then the copyright and finally the footer. The ordering of everything goes right down to the text.
• Could you use it? If you can use your design perfectly without flaw, then others can. This may sound wrong and many people may argue, but the standards of what people can and can’t use is pretty simple. Either you can or can’t use something to its full ability.
• Rule of thumb. People often overdo the text or overdo the graphics. The total design of the site should equate to 30% content and 70% design. This is a healthy balance that ensures those with visual-spatial learning styles get what they need and those with visual-linear get what they need.

There are different forms of design. The most common in the good website search I found was modular. It proves effective for most instances and also fulfils all or most of the criteria in design. There is a difference between the style design and the working design. The style at the moment is probably grunge, reflecting the dark clothing styles of many designers. The working design is, you guessed it, modular. If you don’t understand what modular means, then here is my take on it:
Modular design is clearly seen as different blocks, that work together in either harmony or contrast to create a total area that comprises of a working website. These blocks may be joined, or in the most common way, separate.


25% Content:
Perhaps not as important, but still holds its own is the content. This is what the actual text within a page says and what its purpose is.

On the homepage, you are best applying these rules. Your content needs to:
• Be in short sentences. Extended subordinate clauses will not help you win visitors, nor will it entertain the ones that are already there. However, saying this, the introductory paragraph of your site needs to be as descriptive in as few words as possible. It may contain as many clauses as you wish. Another element that is exempt from this rule is blog entries. They often need to be long and extended as they are practically a journal/diary.
• Contain plenty of internal and external links. Internal links are to other parts of your website, external are to other sites. Outbound links generate inbound links and gets you popularity and increases your Google Page Rank.


The rest of your site needs to contain proper English and perfect grammatical sentences. If you are slightly bad at English then type up the content in the likes of Microsoft Word, where it assists you. DO NOT TYPE SHORT HAND. Something that annoys every visitor is seeing this:
“So hows it goin liek. I ehh, wonderd if u was liek gonna chek out ma site”.


12.5% Structure:
This is characterised by the actual structure of your site. This extends from your menu.

Although structure does not directly influence visitor ratings, it is still apart of the process of making the good website and is essentially important in updating (next point). Your structure needs to follow a logical set. And so does your menu.

Home
About
Menu Item 3
Menu Item4
Menu Item5
Contact

The above is just an example of the way a vertical menu should be set out, it can be more complex, but that is the general method. The name of the pages should be directly linked to what the actual page is about. Having a games.html page when it is a chat page is useless and can cause great confusion when updating. Just use logic.

12.5% Update:
The key to any success of the good website is to update. This doesn’t mean add ten pages of solid information every year, it means to add a little bit every day or every week. Regular updates can make a site prosper and become something known as Sticky. It may not be design-candy nor structured properly and may defy every rule there is, but the fact it is constantly updated magnetises the visitors to its metallic core. Just keep it in mind when trying to achieve the good website.

The percentages above equate to the total of importance of making the good website. The last three that I comment on may be short, but I feel they incorporate a lot of common sense and logic. Design is the part for me that a lot of people struggle with.

Examples of the good website:
GoogleGoogle
AdobeAdobe
BBC iCANBBC iCAN


Well, I hope this helps. Please feel free to add anything (in further posts) that you feel I have left out.


-mik (alias: guy, twitch, landoboy, haggis_basher)

 

 

 

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Well done, guy. I think your post is a truly useful one, and I agree with most of what you said, except for one very important thing. I actually majorly disagree with you on it ...

You said...



This may - only may - be true for amateurish or hobby sites that are not looking for longivity or real exposure. But if your Website is your business, then content is your utmost no.1 priority, All the time.

And I'm talking from real-world experience, by the way. I'm not just arguing for the sake of argument. I know you wrote that piece in good heart. But I've been running my own online business for over 6 years now, and so I know a thing or two about good and bad Websites. Trust me when I say, my friend, that I've never seen any Web expert rate content at less than 70%. Some even say it may go up to 90%, but I think that's an exaggaration.

Of course the other factors mean a great deal to the over-all success of a Website. What good can a first-class copywriter do if the graphic designer created a childish, useless design?

And you also used a great example to make your point: Google.com. Now those are people who truly get it.

Their site has a very simple objective: to provide a SEARCH form for their visitors. And since that's the ONLY objective of their home page, you see nothing else to distract visitors. Even as they provide some links to facilitate the search, or links to other parts of the Google network, they provide them as text links, so they are totally unobtrusive. The only people that would notice them are the ones actually looking for them. Great design, if you ask me!

Of course, there are a lot of things that go into the making of a good Website, and you mentioned some of the most important ones. Maybe I will add to the list as time goes.

Thanks for a great post, guy. Keep up the good work.

All the best,
Mernokh

 

 

 

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Thanks for that. Being mostly into design, I prefer to think that it holds precidence. However, retrospectively looking, I believe that Design and Content are equals.

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I think the percentage values are way off being correct.

How I would rank importance:

Content
Structure/Semantics
Design

The updating speaks for itself and shares a different situation for a good website.

Google's front page is actually a bad site but it's built for a specific purpose and that was simplistic and straight to the point of what it wants and greater support for many old browsers, it however lacks in content and structure or semantics.

However it does not need much in content as it is laid out in a suitable way and it's job is for gather content, but it is not structured in a suitable way or how to put it, in a more understanding, easy navigational way.

You should look at it again. Notice the placement of every object you see on the page. You are actually expected to know how to use google, in which case most people do, but it's a confusing layout none the less if you look over it. The only evidence that says its to search the web is it's button and the check box.

Google expects too much from it's users, it thinks you do know how to use google, they could have added more content, made navigation easier. I think their reason was to make it cleaner and load faster.


Cheers,

MC

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I'm gonna have to agree with mastercomputers here. To me, content IS best - no doubt about it. You have to look at this aspect: design will not have users coming back. Refreshed content will, however, hold true to such a stipulation. You have to understand, just how long will users want to look at some layout? How long will users be enthralled by your flash intro before... they simply get bored? Well, the same cannot be said for content, because content is ever-changing, and graps the attention of all the audience.

As such, yes, I believe content is the first priority, followed by structure and - then and only then - design.

My ratio can be viewed as such:
Content: 50%
Structure/Set-up:30%
Design: 20%

There you go - the truth to all life, as a matter of fact, shown by the above ratio... !

Stickin' to it,
HTML_Guru

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Noooo. But I will accept it. From reviewing the posts made about my 'tutorial' I have to say, yes. Content is more important than design. But without any design thought, then it still can flop. Therefore, I now believe there is no ratio in the whole process. Every aspect should be considered as 100% importance, this would give a top-heavy percentage. But we must do what we have to do.

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Content for me, too, is much more important than a flashy, eye-catching design. However, I definitely agree that you need a decent looking page to keep your visitors coming back. If you have great content .. but then a page with a color scheme like a white background with lime green text, not many people gonna show up.

I guess there really isn't a magic percentage for each category. You just gotta do what you gotta do.

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I myself am a member of many hundred online communitys and have ran several sucessful and not so good websites, Now the way i look at a website is that the content should be really good and updated very frequently, the Design of a site should be good, nothing to over the top, simple design is sometime good. So the way i veiw the web is:

Content: 65%
Design: 20%
Structure: 15%

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A'ight!

I think, you should keep two worlds apart there. I agree with you who say that the content is the thing that draws people two your site. No one goes to a website just to see the design. (except if it's art, that's a different thing).
So concerning priority, the content is first. I won't use this silly percentage placement.
But: Around the content there should be a neat, fitting and not exagerated design. It should suit the content. Not the other way round! On a webpage and this is where I come to agree with guy, the design should take in the major part. You can still have priority on your content, but you make it easier to take it in if it looks nice, right?
But this is about place, not priority.
I know a lot of guys, who were experimenting with photoshop and made up their classical "That's me" pages just to show their designing skills. No one ever visits these sites, it's worse than beepworld.
Oh, and I think structure should be considered equally important to design. Because if your menu points look neat but nobody finds what he finds because the font is a little too artistic or something, then, well, nobody will find what he needs.

concerning structure google sucks by the way. Just try, for evaluation purposes: When you're surfing on a non-English computer, to find Google Labs by clicking your way from the main page. It's horribly difficult and it shouldn't be, because people in other countries want to test beta services too. Oh btw. the easiest way is too use www.google.com/ig so it doesn't switch to the nationalized version.

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Allow me to echo the opinion of content before all else.

As far I have seen, content is the end all, be all of web sites. If you have good content then you will keep your readers coming back. Take my college football site:

I Know College Football

Aside from the self promotion, what you'll notice is that there is little to no involved design. Yet I pull many visitors from MSN search and Google because of my content. They come back because that content is respectable and fresh (except for the past week).

The proviso is that your content should be easily accessible. This is done with the deployment of a search and archives. I believe that's why blogs have taken off. They give you all of that in an easy-to-do system.

More often than not, I've seen site with good content take off in spite of a mind-blowing (or even just good) design.

Design is icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned.

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