Create an effective home page.Because Web site visitors see the home page first, it's vital that you pay attention to content and appearance. CONTENT * Summarize sum·ma·rize intr. & tr.v. sum·ma·rized, sum·ma·riz·ing, sum·ma·riz·es To make a summary or make a summary of. sum the contents of the Web site so visitors know what to expect as they tour through it. * Include a site map and add hyperlinks to your major content catagories. * Highlight key content sections and provide links to them. * Show the most important content at the top of the home page because visitors might not scroll To continuously move forward, backward or sideways through the text and images on screen or within a window. Scrolling implies continuous and smooth movement, a line, character or pixel at a time, as if the data were on a paper scroll being rolled behind the screen. See auto scroll. down to the rest of the page. * Make sure the home page is easily accessible. Don't overload See information overload and overloading. it with content. * Think like a visitor: Design the site so it's easy to navigate (1) "Surfing the Web." To move from page to page on the Web. (2) To move through the menu structure in a software application. and content is easy to find. APPEARANCE * Use your company logo, but keep it small and in a consistent location. If you don't have a logo, consider hiring a designer to create one. * Design your pages to attract the eye to the entire page, not just a single part of it. TECHNOLOGY * Prepare the site for search engines. In addition to submitting your site to the most popular ones (like Yahoo and AltaVista), add the special HTML HTML in full HyperText Markup Language Markup language derived from SGML that is used to prepare hypertext documents. Relatively easy for nonprogrammers to master, HTML is the language used for documents on the World Wide Web. codes that tell search engines how to deal with your Web site. * Make sure the entire site is able to load quickly even over a slow Internet connection. In general, pages should take less than 15 seconds to download over a 28.8 Kbps modem. Source: Adapted from New Webmaster's Guide to FrontPage 2002: The Eight Steps for Designing, Building, and Managing FrontPage 2000 Web Sites, by Jason Gerend and Stephen L. Nelson. Published by Redmond Technology Press, Redmond, Washington Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, USA. It is situated on the eastern edge of the Seattle urban area, in what is known as the Eastside. In 2003 the Census Bureau estimated the city population was 46,391. , www.redtechpress.com. |
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