Web Design Thinking-determine the site's columns and sections

Design "Thinking of Design" series of articles, today began to write the third article. Atzie is not a professional web designer, but Atzie will do his best to write this series of articles, as far as possible the experience of their own practice summed up to tell everyone, hope to give you a little harvest, a little inspiration. If there are different opinions in the article, you are welcome to write a letter of discussion, send a letter to ajie@soim.com, thank you.

In the first two articles, we learned about locating the website theme and establishing the CI image of the website. Is it time to enter the substantive design stage? The answer is: No. Experience tells us that building a website is like writing an article, first of all, to prepare an outline, the article can be a clear topic, the level of clarity; also like building a high-rise, first of all to design a good frame drawings, in order to make the structure of the building reasonable.

The easiest mistake for beginners, including my own:-), is to start making the subject immediately after it has been identified. When you have a page after the completion of a page to find: The site structure is not clear, the directory is complex, the content of the East piece of the west. The result is not only that the viewer is confused, it is also very difficult to expand and maintain the site, your site may be halfway, even worse: you have lost the confidence and interest in making the homepage!

Therefore, before we make a Web page, we must consider the following three aspects:

1. Determine columns and sections;
2. Determine the directory structure and link structure of the Web site
3. Determine the overall style of the site creative design

Today we are going to start by discussing "Identifying the columns and sections of the site."

The subject matter of the website is confirmed, I believe you have collected and organized a lot of relevant information content. You must think that these are the best, will certainly attract netizens to browse the site. But have you put the best and most attractive content in the most prominent position? Do you have the absolute advantage of making good things in the layout?

I see a lot of personal homepage of the column (main menu) is not the case. For example: There is a to provide animation material for the theme of the site, its main columns are: About stationmaster, this station navigation, animation Treasure House, this station forum, this station message book, contact stationmaster. The home page is written on the site and the copyright statement (incredibly there will be the site set as the homepage). The most important, most attractive animation material in the main column accounted for 1/6, in the first word did not mention. I think even this site does have a lot of, exquisite animation material, it is difficult to attract visitors to continue digging.

The essence of the column is a Web site's outline index, the index should be the main body of the site clearly displayed. In the formulation of the column, we should carefully consider, reasonable arrangements. General website column arrangements to pay attention to the following aspects:

1. Be sure to keep your theme in mind!

The general approach is to classify your theme in a certain way and use it as the main section of the site. For example, the above example can be divided into animal animation, logo animation, three-dimensional animation, cartoon animation, etc., on the home page marked the latest updated animation. Remember: The number of subject columns in the total column to occupy the absolute advantage, such a site obvious professional, prominent themes, easy to impress people.

2. Set up a recent update or website guide column

If your home page does not have a layout for the latest updated content information, it is necessary to set up a "recently updated" column. This is done to take care of the frequent visitors and make your homepage more humane.

If you have a large page (more than 15MB), more levels, and there is no site search engine, we recommend that you set the "Site Guide" column. can help first-aid people quickly find what they want.

3. Set up a two-way exchange of columns

It doesn't have to be a lot, but it must be. For example, forum, message book, mailing list, etc., can let the visitor leave their information. There are surveys that provide two-way communication sites than simply leave an "Email me" site more affinity.

4. Set up a download or FAQ answer section

The network is characterized by information sharing. If you see a site with a lot of excellent valuable information, you definitely want to be able to download it at once, rather than one page at a glance. "Care" in your own home page to set up a data download column, will be liked by everyone. Some sites in order to display the amount of advertising, an article has to be divided into several pages, I think sooner or later due to the decline in the number of visits to eliminate (personal opinion:). In addition, if your site often receive friends about a certain aspect of the problem letter, you'd better set up a frequently asked questions to answer the column, not only to facilitate the netizen, you can save more time to learn.

As for other ancillary content, such as about this site, copyright information can not be placed in the main column, so as not to dilute the theme. Summing up the above points, we have to draw attention to the division of the column:

Delete topics unrelated to the topic as much as possible
List the most valuable content on the site as much as possible
Make it as easy as possible for visitors to browse and query

The above is the column, we look at the section set. The concept of the section is bigger than the column, each section has its own column. For example: NetEase's site is divided into news, sports, finance, entertainment, education and other sections, each section below has its own main column. The general personal site content is small, only the main column (main menu) is enough, do not need to set up the forum. If you feel that there is a need to set the section, should pay attention to 1. Each section should have relative independence. 2. Each section should be interrelated. 3. The content of the forum should be around the theme of the site.