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How to...
Plan and design your site
Plan your Site
Building a website is a creative process and your website’s design will depend on the nature of your online business. Your website must not only reflect your company’s image, but also address the needs of your customers.
Planning your website is as important as actually building it. If you take the time to create an overall appearance for your website, and determine the best way to present your online products and services, you will increase your website’s effectiveness, productivity and success.
It is important to involve as many staff members as possible in planning your website (not just the technically minded members). Your website is another avenue through which you can promote and sell your products and services. Your staff know your business and your customers through regular interaction and should be able to identify the information that will be of interest to customers. This knowledge and experience is extremely valuable when planning your website. Management involvement is also critical to the successful planning and continued development of your website.
This section gives you some general rules to follow when planning the structure of your website.
Website Content Collection Booklet
The content collection booklet has been developed to assist you in planning your website, gathering materials and supplying these materials in the necessary formats. Our Content Collectors will also assist you in this process by answering any questions you have and helping you to plan your website layout and determine what aspects of your business you should feature in your website. However, at the end of the day you and your staff know your business best, which is why we leave it up to you to make the final decisions and to provide the copy and images.
To obtain an Adobe Acrobat (pdf) version of our content collection booklet Click Here
Design your Site
Sensis WebWorks™ takes all the hassle out of the design process by offering a choice of over 60 design templates that you can apply to your site. You simply select a template that best reflects your business type. Preview some of the available designs in the Template Gallery.
After you have selected a template we will take care of the rest. Below are some of the general design principles that we take into account when building your website.
General Design Principles
There are no hard and fast rules to designing a website. However, there are some basic guidelines that should be taken into account in the design of a website.
Good webpage design is functional as well as aesthetic. While there is a tendency to separate the "look and feel" and content presentation elements, it is important to consider both elements as part of the overall design of your website.
Good overall design has the following 3 characteristics:
- Consistency
- It supports, but doesn't overpower the message
- It's appropriate to the particular message being conveyed
Design Elements
A site’s design needs to be consistent from one page to the next. This is where you need to make good use of the logo, banner, menu, background and text areas of the Sensis WebWorks™ page layout. If these areas are consistent across all pages your customers should never become lost, or forget which website they are visiting! Customers should also be able to easily identify their location within your website and be able to quickly find any information they may require. Navigating your website should be intuitive and logical.
Your Company Logo
It is crucial to use your logo on your website. We recommend using the existing Logo Area but you don't need to stick to that. You could also place your logo in the banner area and/or background area.
It is importamt that your logo is of high quality. It is best to get hold of your original logo artwork. This way it can be saved as the appropriate file type for internet publishing (gif or jpeg) and at the right file size so that it appears sharp and clear. A scanned business card wont usually achieve as good a result and can look unprofessional.
The background should never distract the visitor from the message and other important elements being presented on your website. "Busy" backgrounds make text hard to read and often create confusion. You should also keep in mind that the visitor may want to print out your pages. Unless you have alternative print-friendly pages or documents available to download, a busy background will conflict with the text when printed. Remember: if you are presenting important information, you must make your pages clean, clear and easy to read.
Keep in mind that dark text on a light background is far easier to read than the other way around. Some designers even go as far as to say white is the only way to go in the background image. This may be a little extreme in a lot of cases, but it does make sense. Depending on your business, white evokes a no-nonsense, professional feel, whereas dark solid colours such as black evoke creativity and mystery.
Extreme fonts, too many different fonts and too many colours or patterns can look unprofessional and distract from the content of your message. Of course extreme styles can be utilised to reflect a particular company image and, if done well, can be effective.
When emphasising words, it's best to choose one method and stick to it, whether it be bold or italic. Never mix multiple styles as it could confuse people. Do not underline words as these will be confused with hyperlinks (which almost always appear underlined) and visitors may attempt to click on them.
Be consistent with the use of fonts. You should use one font for all the body text and possibly apply a bold effect and increase the size of Page Titles and Headings to differentiate them from the body text.
San Serif fonts are generally more legible on screen than Serif fonts and many people consider them to be more modern and contemporary. A typical San Serif font is "Arial" and a typical Serif font is "Times New Roman". Verdana has been used for this website and is one of the most common fonts that is applied to websites.
Formatting restrictions: You will find that you have a lot more restrictions with website pages than with printed material. For example, you cannot justify paragraphs because different browsers, screen sizes and resolutions will still display text differently.
Make sure you include regular paragraph breaks throughout the text by inserting two 'returns' at the end of the paragraph, or by placing paragraphs breaks using HTML. This will spread out the text to make it less heavy and overwhelming. Well spaced out text is much easier to read on screen, and it is much easier to 'lose your place' when reading something on screen than when reading print.
Don't underestimate the power of "white space" on a web page. White space can be used cleverly to separate text and images, or draw attention to particular elements. Text crammed up against images, or overcrowding of pages does not present well. You need to create a flow for your pages that directs the visitor to the appropriate information.
- Images
Images are a part of any effective, well-designed website. Your images could consist of a company logo, pictures or photos of your company's products and services, or any other photo or graphic you feel reflects your business' image. You can easily include images on in your website using the Sensis WebWorks™ software.
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Colours
When you choose colours for a page's background, text or navigation buttons, ensure they are complementary colours, and that they don't blend into each other. Your visitors must be able to see the text and images clearly on each page. For example, yellow text on a white background is very difficult to read.
It is also a good idea to remember basic colour conventions when designing your site. For example, red is associated with danger, blue is calming and yellow is cheerful. Think about the feeling you want to project to visitors of your website before choosing colours.
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