Logo Design & Website Design by firebubble

How to Effectively Lay Out the Content of Your Website

You will undoubtedly have spent time considering how your website design is going to look. You may have given much consideration to your colour scheme, your image use and your general item layout. But have you considered the layout of the content to be found on your pages? No matter how attractive your website is, with a big block of bland text your visitors will immediately be put off. It is information that your potential clientele are looking for, so paying attention to how your content looks is a crucial step in your website design.

Fortunately there are some simple rules to obey in order to effectively organise the content within your website. Stick to these rules and you will help your visitors to glean the information that they desire.

Rule one – Using bold text

Have you ever considered how you read a website? Unlike a book where you would read the information from the front cover to the back, we take information from a website by skim reading to find the information that we were looking for.

Bold text is an incredibly effective means to attract the attention of your visitor. As the eye is automatically attracted to any text that stands out, you can highlight a key selling point of your company or organisation, or even just an important piece of information effectively in this manner.

Don’t use too much bold text on a page to enhance the effect still further as it will be more eye-catching the less it is used.

Rule two – Using bullet points

Now that you know that visitors won’t necessarily sit down to read all your information, you should understand how effectively bullet points could be used within your content.

-       A visitor’s eye will automatically wander to bullet points.

-       Make sure your points are short to be effective.

-       Give the information to your visitors in a concise way.

Rule three – Using paragraphs

One long block of text with no paragraph breaks whatsoever is an excellent way to lose visitors fast. Ensure that you leave a blank line between the breaks in your text instead of the more traditional indentation. Adding in this white space will make your page look more attractive and will be easier to read.

Always remember that the length of any paragraph can be used to great effect.

For example, short paragraphs after and before long ones will make a reader pay more attention. They will assume that a sentence important enough to be removed from the main text contains some vital piece of information.

Rule four – Using colour

As with bold text, the use of colour should be spared for special occasions and words or phrases that you really need to emphasise. Using one different colour on a page of black text will really help those words to stand out. Consider your choice of colour carefully so that it stands out without offending the eye.

Before releasing your website to the world, make sure that any different colour text that you have used is easily readable when placed over your website’s background.

Rule five – Using fonts

An overly elaborate font could look good in your own eyes, but may not aid your visitors as they struggle to read exactly what you have written. Sticking to well known fonts that are widely used in most internet browsers such as Helvetica, Times New Roman and Arial will really help your visitors to get the information that they desire.

Author Note: (The above article has been added to our Website Design Articles section as part of our efforts to help provide our website visitors and customers with an insight into the Logo Design and Website Design industry).

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