Site Layout - Order is Important!

Have you ever been to a website and been totally confused? If the answer was yes, would you browse through even more pages of that site, looking for the information you were after? Probably not, and this is the case for the majority of users. Taking this into consideration, start thinking of every user as a potential customer – a customer you may lose if your information is not ordered in a logical and structured way.

Logo and Menu Placement
As with the majority of business websites, a prominent logo should be visible somewhere in the top 10% of the screen to let your new customer know who they are dealing with. The main menu of your site should be visible without any vertical or horizontal scrolling and be placed before any actual content. Depending on the nature of the site, only 3 to 5 menu selections should be on the Index page of your site. Too many choices at this stage can confuse users and as such draw from the usefulness of the page. Pick categories that will appeal to the market you are aiming to attract – Search Engines will pick up these as keywords for your site!

Style of your Content
Under the menu will be the reason people will be coming to your site – the content! There are no rules set in stone regarding the formatting of content, however time spent creating styles that are attractive and easy on the eye will ensure users are not distracted from it by the page design. Common font sizes used for headers range between 10-14px whereas actual article text can range from 8 to 12px. Use font sizes that are pleasant to read and that will not cause your users any discomfort.

Link Placement
Larger websites often use multiple menus to the left or right of the main content area to showcase other sections of their sites or perhaps advertisers. Depending on the layout style you have chosen, a 100px area to the side of your content can be a great place to add links to other relevant articles or reference material. If you have chosen to make a section such as this, use small font sizes and colours that won’t distract users from the main content area.

The bottom area of your website, although the last thing a user will see, is a great place to put less important information, such as Copyright details or a Terms and Conditions link. Once again, make sure to use font sizes and colours that don’t detract from the information provided in the article above!

When you combine the elements above, your new layout will be a suitable environment to put in the topic of the next stage of this article – Content creation!

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