An

1
An Introduction To Websites With a little of
help from WebPages That Suck
2
3 Categories of Website

• Business
• To make money
• Eg http//www.virginblue.com.au/
• Information
• To disseminate information or opinions
• Eg http//www.led-zeppelin.com/
• Ego
• A personal webpage

3
Business Site - Guidelines

• looks professional
• branded
• Eg no spelling errors
• easy to navigate
• Divide content into logical groupings
• Informative
• What does the company do, can the user tell this
  from the front page
• Contact information on every page
• marketed properly
• Search engine submissions
• Suit the target audience
• quick to load
• More than a breath go somewhere else

4
Who is the target audience?

• Identify
• Current customers
• Potential customers
• What are their information requirements?
• How can you best present this information?
• What are possible paths the target audience may
  take?

5
Homepage

• Often first page a user visits so it is very
  important. It should
• Fast to download
• Clearly display Sites purpose
• Contain navigation
• Look professional

6
Navigation

• navigation tools
• texts
• Graphics
• both
• Consistency (type, position, links)

7
Text

• Content is King
• Must be easy to read
• Font size, face, color background color
• Scannable
• Generally people scan not read
• Bullet points
• Summarise text
• If there is too much text
• add graphics
• Allow user to print and or download the document

8
Graphics

• Dont use them unless they look really good
• Keep the graphics file size small
• ie jpeg or gif
• Use blocks of color instead
• Careful of background images
• text must be easy to read
• Use image descriptions - (Alt parameter)
• Do you need animated GIFs
• Dont use them for the sake of animation

9
Sound

• Is it necessary?

10
Good web design

• Consider
• Planning 1 - site map
• split the content into logical sections
• Planning 2 page layout
• How each page will look
• Planning 3 Content guide
• Page content
• Carefully select text and graphic
• Browser Support
• eg IE and NN
• Hardware support
• Different screen resolution, download speeds

11
Creating a Web page or site

• WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get
• Eg dreamweaver, frontpage
• What you design on-screen will (should) appear in
  a browser window
• Raw HTML code
• Homesite, Notepad