Web Site Layout
A Relative Role

You plan, design your web site layout and build a web site with four main purposes in mind:

1. To be found amongst the 56 million other web sites.
2. To be a source of helpful information for your visitors.
3. To attract an ever increasing flow of visitors. (You need traffic, because not every visitor becomes a customer).
4. And ... of course ... to sell your products and/or services.

To achieve all that, you have to pay attention to more than just the web site layout! The content first, then the layout and the web site infra-structure must all be considered.

When planning a commercial web site, you have to please four different entities, namely:

• Humans are favorably influenced by the quality and reliability of your site's content, and by it's overall usability. Humans are the ultimate judge and jury. They hold court every day. When they like your site and find it helpful, they come back in increasing number and frequency. So, obviously, it is imperative that your content be reliable and useful. In addition, your web site layout must be well thought out and supported by a carefully planned and designed infra-structure.

• Search engines (SE) use complex algorithms to evaluate your site. Their spiders will use your site's infrastructure to find, rank and index your site pages. The SE will also track the behavior of your visitors: where they came from, what they did when on your site, and what they did upon leaving your site. The SE will therefore give you additional points for making humans happy!

• Browsers: humans use them to navigate the WWW and visit web sites. The general web site layout and it's infrastructure must be designed to be within the capabilities of the most popular browsers in use. If the browser misbehaves when visiting your site, you generally get the blame, not the browser! So watch your step … and make that infra-structure compatible with the most popular browsers!

• Directories: human editors evaluate and rate each site before including it in their directory. Amongst other considerations, the content and overall usability of your site are taken into account.

Each of the above entities have their own specific requirements, and you have to take all of them into consideration when planning your web site layout.

I have summarized and classified some of the key elements in the table below.

HUMANS	SEARCH ENGINES (SE)	BROWSERS	DIRECTORIES
Web Site Content Structure: Essentially a site map indicating the topic and purpose of each page on the site, as well as the logical relationships between pages. Humans use the site map to get a clear and quick idea of the web site layout. Usually in hierarchical and/or outline format.	The SE considers off site criteria in it's ranking of your site. It will spider your site and factor in what it finds out about the behavior of your human visitors.	Not an issue. Browsers slavishly display the coded page.	Inclusion is based on how useful and reliable your site content is determined by humans.
Site Infra-structure elements: + Labeling system. + Navigation structure. + Folder and file naming convention. + Folders structure to hold text, pictures, graphics, PDF and other files to upload. + Programming languages. + Target browsers supported. + Transactional structure. + Database manager engine(DBMS). + Database structure. + Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). + Site searching system.	The SE uses filenames, and links to and from these files, to spider your web site. It also needs text to perform it's spidering and evaluation. The site infra-structural elements are the web site layout to an SE.	Most people use Internet Explorer, but not everyone uses the latest version! Less than 10% of web surfers use other browsers like Netscape, Firefox or Eudora. In any case, it is best to stick to the W3C recommendations (opens NEW window) when designing.	Navigation and readability issues influence the humans in their evaluation of your site and, therefore, your inclusion in directories.
Page Structure elements:(Usability issues for humans) + Page layout. + Graphics and colors. + Animation, video clips and audio clips. + Character set support. + Character fonts used. + Style of headlines. + Image formats (PNG, JPEG, GIF)+ Keyword(s) (hooks or anchors). (Infra-structure code for browsers) + Have a look "under the hood" of this web page. Use the View>Source menu of your browser. You do not need to know how to code a web page. Many software packages can translate your text and page layout into intelligible code for browsers.	The SE will use HTML tags, keywords and headers when spidering, indexing and ranking your site.Pictures, colors, typeface, graphics and video are for human eyes only.	Browsers blindly translate code into visible content on a web page. (HTML, Javascript, tables, frames, CSS, etc.).	The degree of usability is evaluated by humans. These evaluations influence the reviews of your site. The inclusion of your site in directories depends on the se reviews.The page layout is an important part of the overall web site layout.

I hope you see that,

• helpful and reliable content,
• web site layout and,
• site infrastructure.

must go hand in hand to make your site attractive to humans. You can plan your site to be coherent and useful. Your site's visibility on the web, and it's ultimate popularity depend on it.

An important reminder

If you find the above information a bit overwhelming, please do not let that worry you. You do not need to be an expert in web site technology to plan and build a fully functional commercial web site. There are services and technological solutions that you can use to do that. As I said earlier, it is useful - not essential - to know what goes on under the hood.

Just concentrate on what you want to do. Most of your efforts should be directed toward creating useful content for your visitors, instead of overly concentrating on web site layout and technology.

Stay tuned!

Do come back often. I will be adding to this site regularly.

Return from "web site layout" to "custom built web site".