Website Content Structure
This is part two of the quick tips of a website designer on your Website Content Structure. This is what we work with you closely to make sure your website flows right, and the structure meets the needs of your end user and Google as well.
Your Target Elements. The Actionable
What are those? Well, these are your actionable targets for your audience. What you want them to do, how long it takes to get there. So, when building out your business website we look at the direct impact between distance, size and the amount of time it takes your end user to navigate through to interact with that Element. As a standard you want your first actionable item to be in your header. You have seen this often, like: go shop, schedule a call, book a time, check this out. Those buttons are targeted to get your end user to do something quick. Typically, action items are found throughout the home page and inner pages so they can smoothly get to where they want to be.
Head Swivels – Too many choices.
Websites that are disorganized and have too much gives you a headache.
No this isn’t the exorcist effect, but have you ever been to a website that you just feel completely overwhelmed? Not sure what to do once you land there. Maybe the site has too many distractions? Color overwhelms you, boxes, and images so you aren’t sure what to do next.. Too many options will stop
your audience and chances are they will leave. So we try to remove the fluff and clutter making it a simply website content structure. Showing the essential options only, targeted content so that they can easily read it. We talked about keeping it simple in the video and last post. This is part of that structure.
Grouped “ideas” for better website content structure.
Think about it, if you offer 5 services and you have them all sprawled out across your website how is anyone going to find what they are looking for. Imagine not having that content with your services divided into areas for quick viewing. Normally you can find those services on a drop down tab in the navigation and they can be shown on the home page. But if you structure this so that there is so much content, and fluff how is your audience going to know where one service stops and the other starts. So, we group together but give them their own home with spacing and a graphic to separate them.
Folks like familiar!
When I look at your content, I try to look at other websites that follow your offers, services or shop. Your competitive edge. With so many websites and people searching there are just standards that make sense and user get familiar with those when they land on a page. One standard we are all fairly familiar with the website navigation. So, we don’t want to move navigation to the bottom that would be unfamiliar to most people and they may not even look there. So, while the look, feel and the content of your website hopefully varies from the other guys we want the end user to focus on what you want them to achieve but in a familiar way. This is another great way to test features and content to get an A/B testing to watch for drop off rates.
Wrap up on website content structure
This post ends most of the website content structure and what goes into the preliminary website framework or mock up in the industry. If you need help or if the concept of content created to into a website is something you just don’t want to worry about. Don’t try to DIY it give me a shout and we will create the perfect structure and flow for your websites content.