Structure
by Heather Champ
The reigning buzzwords du jour in Web design are "scalable" and "modular" or "modularity." And while these terms can relate to Web design, in a general they are more interesting when applied to the architecture or structure of a site.While pushing pixels around to great effect may be old hat to many, this architecture or actual structuring of the information can still prove to be a stumbling block. Scalablity allows for an elastic design that will enable growth without too much reorganization. Modularity works with this within this framework by providing new elements of content to be added in a seamless fashion.
What are the bigger sites doing, and are they doing it well? It may be a gross generalization to assume that these sites may have more resources to draw on for creation. While one might think that there is proportional or even exponential growth in Web development team numbers relative to company size, the reality is that while there may be more warm bodies, it's never the ideal number.
Microsoft and C|Net both seek to disseminate varying kinds of information. Apart from the somewhat similar palette, both choose to preload many of the GIFs that will appear throughout the site. This partnered with the wealth of information of the home page leads to a rather long download time.
Getting around Microsoft can be rather difficult if you are not taking advantage of what ActiveX has to offer. Lateral navigation within the sections is limited to the five buttons that head every document within the site so there can be a lot of back and forth as you try to move from one area to another. C|Net uses a familiar left-hand side bar navigation, which enables a user to move more freely within the site, but given the amount of information included leads to longer, larger documents.
Things to Consider
- Brainstorm: While many clients immediately want to see what their Web sites will look like, jumping over the crucial planning and organization stage of site development can cause problems down the road. It can be somewhat difficult to convey to the client that this stage is key for a site's success.
- Hierarchy: If you decide against the "we must have everything on the first page" scenario, think about how to organize the content. This is especially important for smaller sites that may launch with a fairly limited amount of content online. Designing without consideration of what the site will look like six months or a year down the line can lead to an unintended complete redesign instead of integration into the existing site. Group similar information into sections that will be easily understood by the user.
- Navigation: Lateral navigation through the site at some level will reduce user frustration if users don't have to travel through the home page each time to reach a different piece of content. While it's impossible to have everything in the navigation, key signposts to different sections will help. Additionally a search function will aid people who are actually looking for a specific piece of information rather than browsing. A number of companies, Excite among them, offer a search mechanism that can be easily incorporated into most sites.
- Balance: Don't lose site of the depth of information. Key information, that which a user is most likely to be searching for, should remain somewhere on or near the top level to ensure that the user is able to find it with reasonable ease.
