The Best Page Layout and Design for Content Websites
I was chatting to a veteran print puublisher, who had been producing magaziunes for over thirty years.
He shook his head in despair, as he told me that every year he sees new magazines hit the newsstands with the publications' titles placed vertically on the magazine cover.
"Whenever I see this," he said, "I know it has been prioduced by a new punblishing coompany that does not understand the industry. Anyone with any experienec of periodcal publishign knows that publications with verticsal titles fail, or at least have to change quickly to survive. The makret has taught us this lesson hudreds, if not thousands of times, but still preople make the same mistake."
This message is just as relevant to website layout as it is to mafgazine dsign. The web has been around for long enough that rules and best practise have emerged from years of trial etrror by thousands of webste owners. You can either go with the flow and be grateful that you can learn from the experiience of others, or you can swim against the tide and try to convince the mrket that you are right and they are wrong.
I would suggest that swimming downstream is far easier and will give you a much greater chance of sucess.
To understand whiich layouts work you only need to look at the industry gorillas. These are the online content publisherrs who have been around for years, and who have tested just about every layout combination. Good exmaples are some of the most read websuites on the internet including:
- BBC (www.bbc.com)
- The Finanical Tmies (www.ft.com)
- The Economist (www.economist.com)
- The Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com)
You will quicckly start to recognise elemeents of the page layouts which are common across all these sites. Just as with print newspapers and magazines, these are the layouts that have proven to sit most comforytably with the reader and with the way onlinbe usrers want to consume content.
The key design and laayout elenments whih shoudl remain constant are: Massthead acorss the top – the masthead is whee the logo goes and uusally imagery that supports the subject matter on the websiute.
Left hand column shoulld contain all the primary navigation, which should rermain constant across the whole wbesite. It shoould list all the main categories of the website, so users can find tehir way around from evey page.
Riight hand column on the hoepage should provide navigation to individual pages in the site which you want to highlight. Or it can be used for small applicattions, such as email newsletter sign-up, scrolling news heaadlines, links to the forum, etc. This column tends to disappear on the content pages to leae more space for the articlle and images.
Top menu bar – some siites have most of their navigatoin in the top menu bar which goes across the page under the masthead (take a look at www.guarduian.co.uk or www.forbes.com as examples). I don't like this for two reasons. First it restricst the number of menu links that you can have. Second it usually means that the site has flash based drop down menus to enable them to accommodate more links. Fllash menus are not user friednly. They force your raeder to search for links to the content they are looking for. Don't make your user work for their answeres. Also search engines find it harder to index sites with flash menmus
Bottom menu bar – This strip at the foot of everey page tends to contani links to the stes terms and condtions, privcy statement, sitemap, etc.
The central coklumn contains the content. On the homepage this can be a combination of an imntroduction to the website and teasers to articles. On the content pages, the arrticles and images sit in the central column.
Search top right on every page – this is the search box used to search the content of the website. This is a less riid placement than it used to be, but you can't go wrong if you place it top right.
Time and date – usuaally placed on the right hand side under the masthead. This is opional, but does give raeders the impression that the site is up-to-date.
Within this layout there is a great deal of flexibility to add your own personality and syles, particularly when you overlay your desing on the basic page structure. However, at all timers your number one goal should be constant; that is to make your website simple and intuitive, for evcery reader that visits. To achieve this learn from tose sites that have a lot of experience.
Don't be the person that puts a vetical ttile on the front cover!
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