How To Unclutter The Content Of Your Website
To the search engines, content is king. However if your whole
site is cluttered with content, it can look really boring and
might scare your visitors away.
Identify Your Audience Do you really need to unclutter the
content of your site? The answer to this question will depend on
what type of web audience you are targeting. There are usually 2
types internet users. The first type of users know what they are
looking for and they arrive at your site with a purpose. They
can be easily satisfied if you make information searching in
your site as simple and quickly as possible. The second type of
users arrive at your site without wanting to achieve anything,
ie they just happened to stumble upon your site while surfing
the internet. Majority of the internet users belong to the
second category. If you want to sell something to them, you need
to make them stay and listen to you which requires more effort.
In this article, I will be focusing on how to entertain the
second type of internet users.
Empower the Cursor The mouse cursor has the ability to change
its appearance as it passes over important areas of the screen.
Changing the mouse arrowhead into a pointing finger or something
else helps the visitor to identify a clickable link (the default
style in all web documents). Rollover effects such as changing
the font effects, background image or color when mouseover also
help to differentiate between texts and links.
Do Not Abuse The Header Most websites are designed to have a
standard header(banner) and footer. Using a standard header on
all your webpages gives your site a consistent look which is
considered as a positive thing in Web Design. However, because
the header catches the most attention, many webmasters love to
throw in tonnes of graphics and information in it, making it
look really bulky. A typical example is the use of Google
Adwords in the header. We want our visitors to stay in our site
longer, so the emphasis should be on the content not the header.
Furthermore, many people now have Google and Alexa Toolbars
installed. Some even have other types of toolbars. This means
that if the header takes up too much space, your visitors cannot
read your content without scrolling.
Organize Your Content It is a good practice to group all related
infomation into their respective categories. When the user
enters the category page, provide summaries of different ideas
in just a few sentences with links to the extended versions (an
example is www.sitecritic.net/design_ideas.php). In that way,
the user can choose to browse and read what they want by
clicking on the appropriate links. In fact, many portals such as
MSN, BBC, CNN are designed in that way.
Implement Pagination A direct way to prevent content clutter is
to keep the length of the body to a minimum. Letting the readers
see the whole page without scrolling motivates them to read the
text. If you have alot of things to tell, separate them into
different pages. If you look at the articles in devshed website,
you will see that all the long articles are split up into
different sections.
Use Images Images break up monotonous text. Numerous studies
show that most people are more likely to read a story if there
is an image accompanying the story. An image also leaves a more
lasting impression on us because our eye is more easily drawn to
familiar pictures rather than words. However, if your site is
full of images, then text can break up the monotonous images.
One caution when using images is that you have to keep the file
size as small as possible without losing the image quality so
that it will not affect the browsing speed.
Empty Spaces Are Useful Negative space are areas that are
intentionally left sparse. An empty space might not seem
interesting but it provides a good boundary for different blocks
of ideas. A typical example is the use of new paragraphs. People
will be confused if you join all your ideas into one big chunk
of text. Negative space also creates a good contrast for the
text. Contrast helps to show the connection between design
elements, establishes the flow of story or directs the eye to
important areas of the web page. Like images, negative space
provide breathing space for the eye. Intelligent use of negative
space is the key to uncluttered a website in a cluttered
environment. If you noticed, you will see that most blogs today
are designed with alot of negative space because they have alot
of text. One has to becareful though, that too much space makes
your site looks really empty which is not good.
Hid Unwanted Information Tailoring a website's presentation
based on individual preferences is another way to reduce
clutter. Unimportant or inappropriate information can be
filtered off by setting up a preferences area whereby the user
is questioned about specific needs or interests. Once the
information is recorded, there can be a script setup to display
only the areas or topics that are important to that viewer.
Many softwares nowsadays offer wizard utilities whereby the user
arrive at what they want by answering some simple questions. The
same concept could be applied to web design. If you are running
an ecommerce site for example, instead of showing all your
products to your viewer at once, you could ask them a few simple
questions, narrowing down and displaying only the product
information that the viewer might be interested. This technique
can been seen implemented in many web hosting sites.
Conclusion With the emphasis on content in Search Engine
Optimization, it is important to display your content so that it
does not bore the reader. If you can make your readers happy,
they will return to your website or even use your services.