Content

Content is king. A typical web site visitor will enter and leave a web site in a matter of seconds. If visitors can’t find what they’ relooking for, they will undoubtedly close the browser or move on to another site. It’s important to keep the main content block as the focal point of a design so that precious seconds aren’t wasted as visitors scan the page for the information they need.

Navigation

It’s essential that the site’s navigation system is easy to find and use. Users expect to see navigation right at the top of the page. Whether you plan to use vertical menus down the side of the page, or a horizontal menu along the page’s top, the navigation should be as close to the top of the layout as possible. At the very least, all main navigation items should appear “above the fold.”

Logo

When designers refer to an identity, they’re referring to the logo and colors that exist across a company’s various forms of marketing, such as business cards, letterhead, brochures, and so on.5The identity block that appears on the web site should contain the company’s logo or name, and sit at the top of each page of the web site. The identity block increases brand recognition and lets users know that the pages they’re viewing are part of a single site.

Containing Block

Every web page has a container. This could be in the form of the page’s body tag, an all-containing div tag, or (and I really don’t want to say this, but) a table. Without some sort of container, we would have no place to put the contents of our page. The elements would drift beyond the bounds of our browser window and off into empty space. The width of the container can be liquid, meaning it expands to fill the width of the browser window; or fixed, so that the content is the same width no matter what size the window is.

Web Page Anatomy

Figure.1 5:.The.anatomy.of.a.web.page

Even from a non-designer’s standpoint, defining a design that satisfies all of the requirements I outlined above is a simple task. It’s similar to making a phrase on your refrigerator with magnetic poetry words. Although there are millions of ways to arrange the words, only a few arrangements make any sense. The magnetic poetry words are like the components, or blocks, of the web page. Although the number of these necessary blocks depends on the size and subject of the site, most web sites have the following components, as shown in Figure 1.5.