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Original
Article About Dexters
"Principles of Website
Design"
by John Paterson
An extract from "Strong Verbs and Pithy Paragraphs, White Space and Limited
Levels: Website Design and Dexter Cattle Association Websites" by John
Paterson - Dexter Dispatch: Quarterly Publication
of the Dexter Cattle Society NZ, no. 35, February 2002, pages 25-31
A website can provide a range of information and services to a user. It
usually does this by linking together a number of webpages, each of which
can vary considerably in function, layout and length. There are different
ways that webpages can be set out and linked together. From the home page
(level one on the site), users can click on “navigation links” at the top,
side or bottom that take them to other pages (level two). These pages may in
turn contain links to further pages (level three), and so on. On some sites,
users always have to return to the home page to get access to other pages.
Most books which provide advice on website design warn against putting too
much onto one page and having a structure too complex to follow. They point
out that having too many levels will confuse users who quickly find
themselves at a low level, bypassing important pages, and finding it
difficult to return to higher levels.
Principles of Website Design
A particularly useful book is “Easy Web Page Creation” by Mary Millhollon
and Jeff Castrina (2001, Microsoft Press, $55 from Whitcoulls) (see
www.creationguide.com for its
companion website). It contains a number of principles for good website
design for individuals, families, clubs, and small businesses. The authors
recommend in chapter two that when you write text for a webpage, you should:
* use precise words and strong verbs;
* keep sentences short without treating the reader as dumb;
* avoid complex sentences;
* avoid having too many hyperlinks (links to other pages or sites) in the
body of the text;
* construct pithy paragraphs, that is, introduce one idea in each paragraph
and keep paragraphs short and to the point;
* separate paragraphs with “white space”;
* avoid using small font size for text, and don’t put too much text on any
one page;
* limit the use of italics and boldface;
* include at the foot of each page the navigation links (links to other
pages), especially if the page has to be scrolled down to be read (this
saves the user having to go back to the top to go elsewhere);
* respect copyright - provide references to the original sources of
information and ideas you use, or provide a link to the original source’s
webpage, if it has one; and
* use bullet points (like this) wherever possible.
When it comes to website design, they recommend (in chapter four) that you
should:
* create a clean, logical structure reflecting the different aspects of the
topic;
* develop a structure no more than three levels (three mouse clicks) deep;
* reserve a webpage’s upper-left corner for the most important information
(such as your logo);
* display a webpage’s main concepts “above the fold” (so that they are the
first to appear on the screen, before any scrolling down occurs);
* regularly up-date or add material to encourage people to return to the
site;
* include in a pages footer material the date that it was last revised;
* incorporate page title, logo, navigation links and footer text into each
webpage;
* don’t use too many graphics or make any page so complex that it takes more
than ten seconds to download; and
* create a consistent look and set of colours and graphics.
There may, of course, be good reasons not to follow some of these guidelines
for a specific web site. But if you use these principles, a website should
turn out to be attractive, interesting and useful. Yet it is difficult to
avoid the temptation to try too much, especially when you have a lot to say.
Take www.cowichanbayfarm.com,
for example.
Website Design: www.cowichanbayfarm.com
[Note: This article was written in early 2002 and this website has
changed in some minor ways since then - however, the main points made below
reflect the application of the principles discussed above.]
Cowichan Bay Farm, run by Lyle and Fiona Young, is 38 acres of field,
forest and orchard on Vancouver Island in the southwest of Canada. It boasts
an art gallery and a working farm with rare livestock breeds. Lyle is an
artist, a painter, and has turned a barn into a gallery where local artists
sell their products. Alongside their pasture-raised chicken and heritage
fruit and vegetables are Navajo-Churro sheep (the first sheep to arrive in
North America with Spanish sailing ships in 1540, with only 500 breeding
ewes remaining in the world in 1992 when the Youngs started to breed them),
San Clemente goats (even rarer, from a Californian island, thought to be
left there originally by the Spanish again) and Dexter cattle. The Youngs
sell their products from their own farm store, host agricultural and art
workshops, and rent out farm facilities to business and educational groups. They are part of the Vancouver Island Rare Breeds group and
are active in the promotion of sustainable agriculture.
The Cowichan Bay Farm website reflects this diversity of interests. It
contains well-written information, set out clearly, often in pithy
paragraphs, liberally but appropriately illustrated with fine photos. A
consistent format is used for each page. Across the top and bottom of each
page are six primary navigation links - Home, Map, News, Philosophy, Farm
Products, and Recipes. Down the left hand side are nine further links to Art
Show, Pastured Poultry, Beef and Lamb, Fleece and Wool, Rare Breeds,
Breeding Stock, Navajo-Churro Sheep, Irish Dexter Cattle, and San Clemente
Goats. Each page is clearly titled and dated. The News page provides links
to a large number of newspaper and magazine articles [36 in January 2005!] about the
farm, as well as a link to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website on
which can be found the transcript of a radio programme on the farm.
There are a couple of minor improvements that could be made to the site,
such as providing the Farm’s newsletter with its own link on the Home page,
but perhaps two major improvements could be considered. First, four extra
navigation links need to be added (or removed). When you go to the News page
and click on a May 1997 article by Lyle Young published in “The Shepherd’s
Journal”, four additional navigation links appear at the top and bottom of
the page - Heritage Tours, Rentals, Workshops, and Weddings. These are all
important commercial components of the farm and should be on all the pages.
However, at present, they are unlikely to be discovered by most users as
they appear only on one page at level three on the site. Interestingly, if
you go to the Heritage Tours page [no longer existing] and click on a
More History hyperlink, you are taken to another version of “The Shepherd’s
Journal” article which does not have the extra navigation links. This
suggests the alternative possibility that perhaps the Youngs decided to
curtail their commercial activities and removed the four additional
navigation links from all but the one “Shepherd’s Journal” page. [These
extra links have now been removed.]
Second, in at least one instance, too many hyperlinks are used within a
webpage on the site. The Heritage Tours page [which has now been removed
from the website] contains seven such links, all but one taking the user
to a page already listed at the left hand side. There is a place for
embedded hyperlinks, such as on the home page when users are being
introduced to the site. But the danger is that users click on such a link,
then click on a further one when they get to the new page, and so on, soon
forgetting where they started from and missing out on the rest of the
information on the original page.
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