Organizing Content

Content organization is an important element in web design that is often overlooked when designing a site.

Here are some general guidelines in organizing your site’s content:

Establish Level of Importance

Establish a high-to-low level of importance for each category and follow this approach throughout the design. Important categories should appear higher on the page so users can locate them quickly.

Provide Useful Content

Provide useful and usable content that supports the website goal on each page. Content is the most critical element of a website.

Put Important information on Top of Hierarchy

Put as much important content as close to the top of the hierarchy as possible. When creating a website that lends itself to a hierarchical style of organization (i.e., a pyramid structure with the most important information on the top), it is beneficial to “flatten the hierarchy and to provide more information sooner. The more steps (or clicks) users must take to find the desired information, the greater the likelihood they will make a wrong choice and leave frustrated.

Use Short Sentence/Paragraph Lengths

Write sentences with 20 or fewer words and paragraphs with fewer than five sentences. Use lists to break up long sentences. Readability improves when sentences and paragraphs are relatively short. Users tend to skip over text that they consider to appear nonessential.

Provide Printing Options

Provide an alternate form of all documents, resources, or files that can be printed in their entirety. Many users prefer to read text from a paper copy of a document, as opposed to an electronic version on a monitor. This is usually more convenient, and allows one to take notes on paper. Users also commonly print website content incase the website does not have the same pages available online at a later date.