XHTML Design Tips
From Academic Computing
Before you start building your website there are a certain number of things to consider. To help you plan your site there are some questions you should answer:
- What will be the function of your website?
- What kind of information are you providing?
- What needs will it fulfill?
- What do you want to say?
- Who is the audience for your site?
- What questions do you want to answer?
- Gather information...
- Verify if this information is really necessary...
- Divide content into groups
- Review to avoid redundancy
- Browse for similar websites
- Prioritize
- Draw a map or outline of your site
- Develop an identity for your site
- Write down a series of adjectives to describe your website.
- How do you want your audience to feel when they browse through?
- Design the layout of your site
- Think of constraints
- Think of navigation
- Be organized, and consistent
- Integration
- Plug-ins
- Attention-grabbers: Scrolling Text, Marquees and Moving Animations
- Colors
- Images
- Frames
- Linking Pages – Orphan Pages
- Navigation – Where the user is in the structure of your website
- Site under construction
- Sound
- Outdated information
- Broken Links
- Long Scrolling Pages
- Pop-Up windows
- Copyrights
