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New Web Site Builds - Best Practices

Do's

  1. Do make your layout flexible. The layout should be designed in such a way that it can "stretch" both vertically and horizontally to accomodate varying screen resolutions.
  2. Do use descriptive page headlines and sub headlines and/or paragraph headers. Page names should have the ability to be placed in plain text with appropriate -Tags. If page titles are required to be in images, there should be descriptive, plan text subheadliens and/or paragraph headers. This also makes it easier for users to scan and read.
  3. Do allow for multiple areas of navigation. Main navigation should be located near the top, horizontal preferred, to conserve real estate on the page. This will also allow more information to be shown "above the fold" (the upper part of the Web page that a user sees first). Navigation buttons should indicate where a visitor is by having that button "on." If main navigation is going to be image-based, there should be a footer "area" for secondary, plain text navigation and a link to the site map.
  4. Use a columnar layout. A user's eyes normally are drawn to the center of the page, and search engines are increasingly using what is referred to as "block analysis" to determine the parts of a web page that are most important. Site visitors naturally scan web pages, and increasingly search engines are taking blocks of a page into consideration, as they weight a page to determine its relevance. We recommend a main column, a secondary column, and in some cases, a tertiary column.

Don'ts

  1. Don't build an entire Web site in Macromedia Flash. Macromedia Flash is often treated as images by search engines. In other words, they tend to overlook them and therefore not search-engine friendly. It also offers poor usability and accessability (when done incorrectly). However, there are alternatives. If you do intend to build a site entirely in flash, we recommend there be an HTML-based version created alongside it.
  2. Don't use "splash" pages. Search engines don't like splash pages, which can sometimes act as a roadblock for them. Recent usability studies have also shown that users don't like splash apges either. The fewer clicks someone has to go through to get to what they're looking for, the better.
  3. Don't put plain text in images. Putting an entire site in images is a huge no-no. Regular page copy should not be in images since search engines can't "read" them. Page copy is the most important part of the Web site and should be in plain text.

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