Website Design Considerations: website columns and sections

This is the third article in the design thinking series. Alibaba Cloud is not a professional web designer. However, Alibaba Cloud will do its best to write this series of articles and try its best to tell you the lessons learned during the practical process, a little inspiration. If you have different opinions on the points listed in this article, please send us a letter to discuss them. Thank you.

In the first two articles, we learned how to locate the website subject and establish the website's CI image. Should we enter the substantive design and production stage? The answer is: no. Experience tells us that building a website is like writing an article. First, we need to prepare an outline so that the topic and layers of the article are clear. Instead of building a tall building, we must first design the frame drawings, in order to make the building structure reasonable.

For beginners (including myself :--), the most common mistake is to create a theme right away. After one page is created, you will find that the website structure is not clear, the directories are complex, and the content is east and west. As a result, not only are the viewers confused, but it is also difficult to expand and maintain the website by themselves. Your website may be abandoned halfway. What's worse: You lose confidence and interest in making a homepage!

Therefore, before making a webpage, we must consider the following three aspects:

1. Confirm the topic and forum;

2. Determine the directory structure and link structure of the website.

3. determine the overall style and creative design of the website

Today, we will first discuss "determining the website's topic and Forum ".

After determining the subject of the website, I believe you have collected and organized a lot of relevant information. You must think that these are the best and will certainly attract netizens to browse the website. But have you put the best and most attractive content in the most prominent position? Is there an absolute advantage in the layout distribution of good things?

I have seen that many personal homepage columns (main menu) are not like this. For example, there is a website with the subject of providing animation materials. Its main topic is about webmaster, navigation on this site, animation treasure house, website forum, message book on this site, and contact webmaster. The home page contains the website and copyright statement of this site (the website is also set as the home page ). Most importantly, the most attractive animation materials account for 1/6 of the main columns and are not mentioned on the homepage. I think even if this site does have a lot of exquisite animated materials, it is difficult to attract viewers to continue mining.

The topic is essentially an outline index of a website. The index should clearly display the subject of the website. When preparing a column, you should carefully consider and arrange it properly. Pay attention to the following aspects for General website columns:

1. Remember to stick to your subject!

The general practice is to classify your themes in a certain way and use them as the main topic of your website. For example, in the above example, the topic can be divided into animal animation, logo animation, 3D animation, and cartoon animation, and the latest animation is marked on the home page. Remember: The number of topic columns must take an absolute advantage in the total column. Such a website is professional and has a prominent topic, which is easy to impress.

2. Set up a recent update or website guide topic

If your homepage does not have a layout for the latest update content, it is necessary to set up a "Latest Update" topic. This is done to take care of common visitors and make your homepage more humane.

If your home page contains a large amount of content (more than 15 MB) with many layers and no intra-site search engines, we recommend that you set the "this site Guide" column. It helps beginners quickly find what they want.

3. Set a topic for two-way communication

You don't need a lot, but you must have one. For example, forums, message books, and email lists allow viewers to leave their information. Some surveys show that sites that provide two-way communication are more friendly than simply leaving an "email me" website.

4. Set up a download or FAQ answer topic

The network features information sharing. If you see a site with a lot of excellent valuable information, you certainly want to download it at one time, rather than browsing the storage disk on one page. Set a Document Download topic on your own homepage, which will be liked by everyone. Some sites need to display their ads on several pages in an article. I think they will be eliminated sooner or later due to a decrease in access traffic (personal opinion :). In addition, if your website frequently receives emails from netizens about some problems, you 'd better set up a topic to answer frequently asked questions, which is convenient for netizens, you can also save yourself more time for learning.

Other auxiliary content, such as website and copyright information, can be left in the main topic to avoid downgrading the topic. To sum up the above points, we can conclude that we need to pay attention to the following points:

● Delete topics irrelevant to the topic as much as possible

● List the most valuable content of the website on the topic as much as possible

● As convenient as possible for visitors to browse and query

The above is the topic. Let's take a look at the forum settings. A forum has a larger concept than a topic. Each forum has its own topic. For example, Netease's website is divided into news, sports, finance, entertainment, education, and other sections. Each section has its own main column. Generally, the content of a personal site is small, and only the main column (main menu) is enough. You do not need to set a forum. If you think it is really necessary to set a forum, you should note that 1. Each forum must be relatively independent. 2. Various sections should be associated. 3. The content of the forum should be centered on the site topic. In terms of forum, the main issue to be considered is the portal site and other large ICPs. Alibaba Cloud will not discuss them here.

Well, it's already late at night, so I wrote it today. Alibaba Cloud will continue to discuss with you how to "determine the directory structure and link structure of the Website". Thank you.