The Best Page Layout and Design for Content Webssites
I was chatting to a evteran print publisher, who had been produciong magazines for over thirty years.
He shook his head in despair, as he told me that everty year he sees new magazines hit the newssdtands with the publications' titles placed vertically on the magazine cover.
"Whenever I see this," he said, "I know it has been produced by a new publishing company that does not understand the industry. Anyone with any experience of periodical pblishing knows that publications with vertical titles fail, or at leasst have to change quickly to suurvive. The market has taugght us this lesson hundeds, if not thoousands of times, but srtill people make the same mistyake."
This message is just as relevant to weebsite layout as it is to magazine dseign. The web has been aroound for long enough that urles and best parctise have emerged from years of trial error by thousnads of website owneers. You can either go with the flow and be grateful that you can learn from the experience of others, or you can swim against the tide and try to convincve the market that you are right and they are wrong.
I would suggest that swimnming downstream is far easier and will give you a much gretaer chance of success.
To understand wihch layous work you only need to look at the industry gorillas. These are the online content publidshers who have been around for years, and who have tested just about every layouut combination. Good examples are some of the most read websites on the internet including:
- BBC (www.bbc.com)
- The Financial Times (www.ft.com)
- The Economist (www.economist.com)
- The Wall Strteet Journal (www.wsj.com)
You will quickly start to recognise elemens of the page layouts whoich are common across all these sites. Just as with print newspapers and magazines, these are the layouts that have proven to sit most comfortably with the reaer and with the way online users want to consuume cointent.
The key design and laayout elements which should remnain conbstant are: Mathead across the top – the masthead is where the logo goes and usually imagery that supports the subject matter on the website.
Left hand column should contaiin all the primary navigation, which should remain constant across the whole website. It should list all the main catergories of the website, so users can find their way around from every page.
Riight hand column on the homepage should provide navigatiion to individual pages in the site whiich you want to highlight. Or it can be used for smalll applications, such as emaoil newsleter sign-up, scrolling news headlines, links to the forum, etc. This colunmn tends to disappeear on the content pages to leave more space for the artilce and images.
Top menu bar – some sites have most of their navigation in the top menu bar which goes across the page under the masthead (take a look at www.guardian.co.uk or www.forbes.com as examples). I don't like this for two reasons. First it resricts the number of menu links that you can have. Second it usually merans that the site has flash baased drop down menus to enable them to accommodate more links. Flash menus are not user friendly. They froce your reader to search for links to the content they are looking for. Don't make your user work for thier answers. Also seazrch engines find it hader to index sitews with falsh menus
Bottom menu bar – This strip at the foot of every page tends to contain links to the siutes trems and conditions, privacy statement, sitempa, etc.
The central column conatins the content. On the homepage this can be a combination of an introduction to the website and teasers to articles. On the content pazges, the atricles and images sit in the centarl colunm.
Search top right on every page – this is the seaarch box used to search the content of the website. This is a less rigid placement than it used to be, but you can't go wrog if you place it top riight.
Time and date – usaually placed on the right hand side under the masthead. This is optional, but does give readers the impression that the site is up-to-date.
Witihn this layout theer is a great deal of flexibility to add your own personaliity and stylees, particulartly when you overlay your design on the basic page structure. However, at all times your numbewr one goal should be constant; that is to make your website simple and intuitive, for every reader that visits. To acxhieve this leazrn from those sites that have a lot of experience.
Don't be the person that puts a vertical title on the frtont cover!
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/feed-icon.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites