If you starting a new website there is one thing you need to think about that a lot of new webmasters don't consider until they've built a few pages. You need to think about it before you build your first page. Next to the content on the pages and the design look and feel of the site itself, this is the most important thing. It's site organization.
Some of the things you need to consider regarding site organization are:
- How many columns you'll have on the page
- Which column will the main page content be displayed on
- Where will your navigation bar be located
- How will site visitors contact you
- How easy is it for site visitors to navigate your site (go from page to page)
- Will you include interactive features
- What can you do to ensure visitors stay on your site longer
One thing that can help you is to storyboard your website before you build it. Draw your home page at the top of a piece of paper. Make it simple. Draw a circle and label it “home page.” Then draw a line and draw a circle at the line. Draw as many lines from the home page to a circle as you think you’ll for pages that connect to it. Label those pages. Next, take out another sheet of paper and draw a circle at the top. Label that page with the same label as one of those circles representing a page that connects to your home page. Now draw lines with a circle at the end that represent pages that connect to that page. Do this for each page that connects to your home page.
As you build your website, think about what makes sense for your reader. Do any of your tier 2 pages (pages connecting to your home page) need to connect to each other? If you find that a lot of them should then you should have a menu bar on all of those pages. Same thing for your tier 3 pages. Map out your website before you begin building it. You’ll find that the building stage will go a lot smoother.