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Designing for Content
We’ve all been told that a successful website has great content. The problem
that I’ve discovered is what do you do with and how to you organize all this
great content?
Below are some of the things that I’ve learned in the time I’ve had my own site.
Now my particular situation is one where my site is constantly growing in
content. I didn’t start my site with all sorts of content at my finger tips. So
the tips below are from that perspective.
1. Keep your content concise and simple. Of course make sure that there is
enough there for your customers but don’t write pages and pages of information.
People are not going to sit there for an hour reading off of a computer screen,
no matter how good the information is.
2. Keep your content relevant to your site. Do not start putting unrelated
content on your site. It will be confusing and won’t help you draw customers
into your site.
3. Organize, organize, and oh yes organize. Keep everything organized. I don’t
know how many photography sites that I’ve been on have these huge lists of how
to articles, hundreds of them which is great, but they are completely
unorganized and I guess they expect you to scroll down through all these
articles to find what you want. So organize your content. Make it easy to find
things. Whether that’s through a search option or carefully organized
subheadings. Make it easy for people to get what they need quickly.
4. My site has grown steadily but more than I ever expected and that created a
problem that I didn’t foresee in the beginning. As you add content and I assume
new pages be aware of where you place these pages in the grand scheme of your
web design. Just don’t add new pages to the bottom of list of links. As the web
site grows the list of links to your other pages could be quite long so keep
some sort of pattern of organization so that as you add pages it will seem to
fit in with the rest.
5. Out of date information. With all this content we’re all adding watch for out
of date information. Remove content with information on technology that is not
longer used. And cycle out old information that just isn’t read or was not very
popular.
These are just a few things that I’ve learned in designing for content on my
site.
Copyright 2005 Kelly Paal
Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting
nationally and internationally. She started her own business Kelly Paal
Photography. She has an educational background in photography, business, and
commercial art. Please visit www.kellypaalphotography.com for more FREE how to
articles.
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