Organizing Your Web Pages

Web design is not just simply adding pages to it.  Web design is organization and navigation.  Whether you would like to design a 3-page website or 5-page website, you should organize every pages and make it part of the whole.  Think of your web pages as the supporting beams of a house, it provides the structure on which the visual design rests.

Each websites vary on the way each web pages are organized -- from abasic web page with paragraphs and headings to a more complex web page that uses a newsletter-style design approach.  You must avoid designing one which has no clear organization or you will suffer in the long run.

So how to organize each page?  Let me give you some tips.

• Keep it Simple -- The emergence of new technologies and the availability of free tools to carry out tasks to create interactive sites with rotating images, embedded audio files, videos, and animations have changed the way we design a website.  But if you don't have the right knowledge of how to use them, this will just cause your pages to slow down. Remember that not all users have the capability to view such web pages which require high bandwidth.  If you want to serve your audience right, use them only if they further the goals of your web page's content.
• Create content-driven web designs-- Your user comes to your website because of information he is trying to look for.  Your website's primary goal is to give him a content that makes him focus his attention.  You should organize your web pages using subheadings, emphasized text, and links that can  help your reader quickly understand the information you're trying to present.
• Chunk your contents--If you have a long page of text, use headings, bulleted lists, and other markup elements,  break it into chunks of information that are easier for your visitor to understand.  Adding images and dividing lines also make the web page easier to read.
• Balance page length--Another issue when designing a page is knowing when to cut your pages and create another one. Web pages that scroll on forever will often lose the reader's attention, and the page may end up taking a long time to download. On the other hand, pages that are too short can also be annoying to the readers because they have to keep clicking to the next page to keep reading.  Having more web pages also helps you rank in search-engines.  Searh-engines love contents.  It is better to have 20 pages than to have 10 pages of contents.

To summarize, it's important to remember that your visitors are likely looking for useful pages that offer them important or entertaining information. At the same time, most people don't enjoy reading long passages on a computer screen, so you'll want to break things up along organizational lines with headings, emphasized text, images, and other such elements.  Finally, remember that not all your visitors are even using a visual browser. 

• Presentation. Before you begin creating web pages within your site, you should consider the best way to present your materials.   The layout should be carefully planned.  Using tables to do a mock-up layout  are very much useful in this sense.  It would be helpful to consider how traditional publications, such as books, newspapers, and magazines, organize information. Organize pages logically, using subheadings within topics, and breaking things up with images. You can do the same things with a website, with the added advantages of hyperlinks and multimedia.  A newsletter or newspaper uses headings, subheads, and sidebars to communicate information, as well as images that are positioned with text wrapping around them.

If you're selling products or real estate, you might want to create web pages that include pictures, descriptions, prices, and so on. Like a mail-order catalog, you'll want all the pages to be consistent, attractive, and easy for the reader to use.

If you are a beginner and want to build your first site, you might also want to consider looking for a host that has on-line site builder feature.  This online site builder software uses a user-friendly interface through a step by step navigator designed for novice users.  There are already many hosting sites that include this feature in their hosting packages but you should look for one that offers unlimited page creation without paying extra fees monthly.    Of course, you can design your own site yourself but if you want to save time, you can make use of this new feature instantly.