Creating Your Website, Step-by-Step

Introduction

Define Your Audience

Develop an Inventory

Group Your Information

Arrange the Categories

Decide on a Name

Incorporate "Must Haves"

Incorporate Graphics

Do a Draft

Lay Out Topic-Level Pages

Create Your Content

Summary

• Usability testing has proved that most web readers prefer to navigate a website by topic; so, in this step, you're going to do two things:
  • Organize your inventory into categories that will become the topics of your site
  • Name the categories, choosing words that make sense to your audience
    
    

• You may have to go through this process several times, until you have the right number of categories to make information easy to find, but not so many that the audience becomes confused

• As a rule of thumb, try not to have more than 3-5 categories for small websites; 10 categories for large websites

• Call your categories something very simple - try to limit to 3 words

Worksheet 3