Internet
Web Site Design
Planning Out Your
Website Structure
Grab your grocery list and let's go shopping for the perfect internet
web site design and website structure.
It is important to plan out the primary topic areas of your site and to
organize them in such a way that makes navigation intuitive and easy
for
your visitors.
So-o-o. . .
You guessed it!
We're headed to the grocery store in this example.
Example of an
Internet
Web Site Design Structure
The grocery store's (Site Theme)
exterior storefront (Look
&
Feel, Home Page) is what you visually see as you pull up
to the store
with your shopping list in hand.
The grocery store is
organized into many different sections such as: Dairy, Produce, Deli,
Bakery, Canned Goods, and so on.
Those are your Tier 2 pages of topics
that directly relate to the overall site theme of "groceries".
You make
a beeline to pick-up your milk, butter and eggs.
Found by quickly
navigating to the Dairy Tier 2 page, which lists each individual item
available in the dairy isle as a
Tier 3 page.
You then rush over to the Deli counter (another Tier 2
page) to order your sliced cheese, shaved imported ham and fresh
chicken salad (all individual Tier 3 pages under the Deli navigation
button).
In no time at all you can see that your website could
potentially have hundreds of tier 3 pages (the individual items on your
grocery list) that each relate to the category of the specific tier 2
topic page.
(Or maybe your head has started to hurt a little bit and you'd like to
go over to the tier 2 health and beauty section to view your options of
tier 3 aspirin choices before we continue on?)
When learning everything
at once it can feel overwhelming at first. Take a deep breath, take it
one step at a time and you will create such a wonderfully designed web
site that you will be bursting with pride!
Just keep in mind that your
overall web site design
goals are to:
- Create an aesthetically pleasing
and user friendly site
- Establish an easy navigation structure that
quickly brings
your visitor to the information they are seeking
- Ensure that the site
web pages load quickly
- Maintain the same appearance on different
browsers
(Site renders the same when HTML compliant)
- Keep it simple so even a first grader can use it
- Above all,
offer great quality content!
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