How do I organize my website?
The process of organizing material for a new website can be daunting at first. It is important to establish an organizational structure for your website at the onset so that the website can be enhanced and expanded over time. ECS is adept at taking client's materials and organizing them into a navigable, user-friendly website.
Organizing website content
When designing a website, the golden rule is that "content is king!" No matter how flashy and colorful a website is, it is virtually useless without organized, accessible content. This means that a person searching for information must be able to quickly find it on your website. If not, they will leave.
With a well-thought-out layout and navigational structure, your content will be easy to find. Quality website design ensures that your content will be available, easily available, and presented in an attractive manner.
The size of your website is really up to you. For a small business, five to ten web pages might be sufficient. For organizations who publish and archive journals, periodicals, and newsletters, thousands of pages might be required.
A good research technique is to search the web for other websites in your line of business. Take a look at their design, content and navigation for ideas as how to organize the content of your website.
Outline the structure and content of your website
Below are some suggestions for content pages on a typical website.
- Home page
- About us page
- Contact page
- FAQ
- Links
- Articles
- News
- Store
- Product information
How to structure your content
The easiest way to structure your content is with a table of contents-style organization, just like you are outlining chapters of a book. For example, the list above can be expanded a deeper outline. The articles page could be expanded as follows:
- Articles
- Articles about our company
- Articles we have written
- Journal article archive
- Our blog
When the overall structure is complete, you are at the point where you can start adding content (or "copy"). For example the FAQ page could contain:
- FAQ
- When was our company established?
- What produces to we offer?
- What product guarantees to we offer?
- ...
This process requires you to think about what you want on your website, and why. It also leads you to develop the content that will go onto your website. This material will greatly facilitate communication with your website designer about the content and navigational structure of your website. We encourage you to review this ECS questionnaire as the starting point for communicating your design requirements.
Contact ECS to discuss organizing content on your website.