Content : Content is king. The whole point of the majority of



websites is to provide content, be it text, pictures, mp3s or

whatever to users. When you build a site the first thing you

should consider is the content. How much is there likely to be,

how often will it change, what content do you want the visitor

drawn to first and so on. Design the site to fit the content,

dont create a site first and then try to decide where to put

everything, it simply wont work.

Accessibility : There is no point in content if people cant

access it. Furthermore you do not want to limit accessibility

to those people fortunate enough to have the latest browsers

& plugins, with high speed connections and with no special

requirements. The World Wide Web Consortium(W3C) publish

guidelines to aid developers in creating standards compliant

websites by writing clean, browser-friendly code. They also

provide automated services for checking that your web pages

conform. It is important to note however that compliance with

these guidelines does not automatically ensure your site is

fully accessible to all potential users. The best way to

achieve this is to test your site against the Web Accessibility

Initiatives guidelines. These are purely self-tested and if you

decide your site has passed you can award it with an A, AA or

AAA logo.

Presentation : Presentation has very close connections to

certain areas of the accessibility issue. In particular

good use of colours is important from both viewpoints.

Too many colours makes any site look un-coordinated and messy.

Stick to a few basic colours for text, backgrounds, logos etc

and use different shades of those colours to add depth. Make

sure text colour and background colour are significantly

different to make reading the text nice and easy. Similarly

do not use an array of different fonts, stick to one or two

throughout the site. Serif fonts such as Impact are good for,

surprisingly, making an impact on a visitor whereas sans serif

fonts like verdana are much easier on the eye when reading.

Large blocks of text look very unwelcoming to visitors so try

to avoid them particularly on the homepage, break text into

paragaphs and sections with sub-headers, lists and so forth,

use images where appropriate to give the user a break from reading.

Overview : It is important to note that all three of these

components are vital in creating good sites but the balance

between the three will vary from site to site. Just remember:

Plan the design to fit the content; keep content fresh and

accessible; make the site pleasing to look at and interact with.

Article written by Adam Harding.