How To Unclutter The Content Of Your Website
How To Unclutter The Content Of Your Website
To the search engines, content is king. However if
your whole site is cluttered with content, it can look really boring
and might scare your visitors away.
Identify Your Audience
Do you really need to unclutter the content of your site? The answer
to this question will depend on what type of web audience you are
targeting. There are usually 2 types internet users. The first type
of users know what they are looking for and they arrive at your
site with a purpose. They can be easily satisfied if you make information
searching in your site as simple and quickly as possible.
The second type of users arrive at your site without wanting to
achieve anything, ie they just happened to stumble upon your site
while surfing the internet. Majority of the internet users belong
to the second category. If you want to sell something to them, you
need to make them stay and listen to you which requires more effort.
In this article, I will be focusing on how to entertain the second
type of internet users.
Empower the Cursor
The mouse cursor has the ability to change its appearance as it
passes over important areas of the screen. Changing the mouse arrowhead
into a pointing finger or something else helps the visitor to identify
a clickable link (the default style in all web documents). Rollover
effects such as changing the font effects, background image or color
when mouseover also help to differentiate between texts and links.
Do Not Abuse The Header
Most websites are designed to have a standard header(banner) and
footer. Using a standard header on all your webpages gives your
site a consistent look which is considered as a positive thing in
Web Design. However, because the header catches the most attention,
many webmasters love to throw in tonnes of graphics and information
in it, making it look really bulky. A typical example is the use
of Google Adwords in the header. We want our visitors to stay in
our site longer, so the emphasis should be on the content not the
header.
Furthermore, many people now have Google and Alexa Toolbars installed.
Some even have other types of toolbars. This means that if the header
takes up too much space, your visitors cannot read your content
without scrolling.
Organize Your Content
It is a good practice to group all related infomation into their
respective categories. When the user enters the category page, provide
summaries of different ideas in just a few sentences with links
to the extended versions (an example is www.sitecritic.net/design_ideas.php).
In that way, the user can choose to browse and read what they want
by clicking on the appropriate links. In fact, many portals such
as MSN, BBC, CNN are designed in that way.
Implement Pagination
A direct way to prevent content clutter is to keep the length of
the body to a minimum. Letting the readers see the whole page without
scrolling motivates them to read the text. If you have alot of things
to tell, separate them into different pages. If you look at the
articles in devshed website, you will see that all the long articles
are split up into different sections.
Use Images
Images break up monotonous text. Numerous studies show that most
people are more likely to read a story if there is an image accompanying
the story. An image also leaves a more lasting impression on us
because our eye is more easily drawn to familiar pictures rather
than words.
However, if your site is full of images, then text can break up
the monotonous images. One caution when using images is that you
have to keep the file size as small as possible without losing the
image quality so that it will not affect the browsing speed.
Empty Spaces Are Useful
Negative space are areas that are intentionally left sparse. An
empty space might not seem interesting but it provides a good boundary
for different blocks of ideas. A typical example is the use of new
paragraphs.
People will be confused if you join all your ideas into one big
chunk of text. Negative space also creates a good contrast for the
text. Contrast helps to show the connection between design elements,
establishes the flow of story or directs the eye to important areas
of the web page.
Like images, negative space provide breathing space for the eye.
Intelligent use of negative space is the key to uncluttered a website
in a cluttered environment. If you noticed, you will see that most
blogs today are designed with alot of negative space because they
have alot of text. One has to becareful though, that too much space
makes your site looks really empty which is not good.
Hid Unwanted Information
Tailoring a website's presentation based on individual preferences
is another way to reduce clutter. Unimportant or inappropriate information
can be filtered off by setting up a preferences area whereby the
user is questioned about specific needs or interests.
Once the information is recorded, there can be a script setup to
display only the areas or topics that are important to that viewer.
Many softwares nowsadays offer wizard utilities whereby the user
arrive at what they want by answering some simple questions. The
same concept could be applied to web design. If you are running
an ecommerce site for example, instead of showing all your products
to your viewer at once, you could ask them a few simple questions,
narrowing down and displaying only the product information that
the viewer might be interested. This technique can been seen implemented
in many web hosting sites.
Conclusion
With the emphasis on content in Search Engine Optimization, it
is important to display your content so that it does not bore the
reader. If you can make your readers happy, they will return to
your website or even use your services.
About the Author Sitecritic.Net
is formed by a group of web addicts, mainly volunteers from all
over the world. Our goal is to create a community of web designers
and developers who share the common interest in bringing out the
best in creatiing effective web sites. More web article can be viewed
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