Plan Your Faculty Web Site

Plan your faculty website Establish a purpose for your web site Determine your audience Organize website information Design a navigation structure Layout and Design Establish a purpose for your web site: A web site purpose will help you begin building a list of items that will eventually become the content and navigation structure of your site. This is where you take a 30,000 foot view of your web site by listing general categories that can be broken down later. The purpose of a faculty website might include: provide students with class notes give students assignments post a current schedule of classes post office hours post a resume share personal interests provide contact information provide a list of favorite academic links share information about research projects RETURN TO TOP Determine your audience: Who will visit your website? Understanding the interests and needs of visitors will help you provide the content and navigation structure that meets their expectations. Knowing your audience will also guide you to design a web site that will be visually interesting and inviting for visitors. students other academic departments parents other colleges and universities student advisors RETURN TO TOP Organize website information: The goal is to organize website information so that it is easy to read and understand. The following steps will help get your website content organized and use that organization to create a navigation structure: use your website purpose to create a simple outline of what you'd like to include gather information for each outline section chunk each outline section into small, balanced paragraphs. use sub titles for paragraphs use bulleted lists to draw attention to important ideas give every outline section a main title use main titles as link titles for site wide navigation RETURN TO TOP Design a navigation structure: A good navigation structure will help your audience find website information quickly and provide a visual index of the content of your site. To create an easy-to-use navigation structure - try the following suggestions: use meaningful link titles that can be understood by a general audience when linking to a new web page, the web page title should be identical to the link title Be consistent - place navigation in the same location on every page of your site RETURN TO TOP Layout and Design:
Consistency: Consistent web page layout will help visitors predict the location of information and navigation controls across all pages of your site. To create consistent design: use the same general layout grid for every page of your site format text the same way on every page of your site design one navigation bar and place it in the same location on every page of your site use one of the 5 different webpage templates we have created for your use. RETURN TO TOP
Color: Text that is hard to read is annoying for a fully sighted reader, but it's important to remember that certain color combinations make pages unreadable for colorblind users. To create web pages that are easy to read, consider the following: black text on a white background is the best combination for reading text on a web page if you decide to use a background color - choose a soft, muted color and make sure text color provides good contrast. white text on a black background is difficult to read yellow backgrounds cause eyestrain yellow text on a white background is almost impossible to read text can be difficult to read in front of a background image or pattern RETURN TO TOP Text formatting: Consistent use of page title, sub head and body text formatting helps readers quickly understand the flow of information on your web pages. Here are a few formatting suggestions: Page Titles: size 3, bold Sub Heads: size 2, bold or bold italic Body Text: size 2, plain or italic Captions: size 1, plain or italic RETURN TO TOP
Homepage Design: The homepage is the most visible area of your web site and can be compared to the front page of a newspaper — stories "above the fold" are much more visible than those below. Try to design your homepage so that everything is at least partially visible when a visitor first lands on the page. Remember that items below the bottom of a browser window can be easily overlooked by visitors because they don't realize additional content is below. Instead of delegating chunks of homepage information to the often overlooked area below the browser window, use links with brief link descriptions "above the fold" to direct visitors to critical information on other pages of your web site. Images: The threshold of frustration for the average web page visitor is about 10 seconds. So, it's safe to assume that if a web page takes longer than 10 seconds to load - visitors will probably leave the site without viewing your content. Remember, be conservative with the size and number of images on a web page - especially your homepage. And if you must include a page in your web site that includes lots of images and therefore, loads slowly - create a link to the page that explains the image content and warns visitors about the slow download time. To ensure that your webpage images load quickly - use a program like Microsoft Office Picture Manager to: crop out unwanted parts of an image reduce the size of images (width or height) to approximately 200 pixels reduce the resolution for web viewing or 72 dpi See 6 Steps to Creating your Faculty Web Site Using FLC Templates - Section 5: Add Text, Photos and Links - for specific instructions for modifying images with Microsoft Office Picture manager. When to use GIF and JPEG files: Use the GIF file format for graphics with large fields of a single color (such as the Fort Lewis College logo). Use the JPEG file format for photographs or any image that incorporates gradations. RETURN TO TOP