Technology Bytes:
Content, or ‘The Myspace Phenomenon’

-- Craig Johnson

Admit it, you’ve been to MySpace. Oh, maybe not as a user (of course...). But you went to check out a friend’s page, or you followed a link that someone sent you. If you haven’t, you know someone — or someone who knows someone — who has a page there. But you’ve browsed or visit regularly. And if it’s not MySpace, then it’s Xango, Blogger, LiveJournal or any of the other social networking Web sites on the World Wide Web.

But you’ve been there. And you’ve seen them - the Web sites that have more content crammed into them than a Grilled ‘Stuft’ Burrito at Taco Bell©. The Web sites that have more graphics, photos, blinking widgets, background images, text colors, and embedded sound files layered into one browser window than you would think would be technologically possible. The pages that use white text over a green paisley hound’s tooth background.

Now, the caveat here is that MySpace is generally for teens and young adults. It’s a ‘social networking’ Web site, which means that there’s going to be a dystopian atmosphere and that you can expect to see green paisley, blinking neon and run-on sentences. You can expect to see background images under white text surrounded by a flash slideshow. This example is an extreme, and it’s a great example of what not to do with a Web site.

As I mentioned in my previous articles, building a Web site requires a serious amount of planning. You need to know what it’s for, what your client wants it to look like and what your users expect to do there. Whether it’s strictly informational, simple pages of text with supporting images, or a graphic-driven interactive Web site, the end result needs to be the same: Your users need to be able to find the information they’re looking for quickly and without difficulty.

As with planning a Web site’s navigational structure and elements, you should spend an equal amount of time designing the Web site’s message and content. In the business world, content is often developed far in advance of any design prototyping. This allows decisions to be made about what is important to the company and the Web site’s users, and helps facilitate the design process by allowing you, the programmer, to know exactly what needs to be said and where. But in those cases where you are the design team, content editor and programmer all in one, here are a few simple guidelines to help design and content work together.

What are you trying to say?

Most Web sites exist for three main reasons: To talk about something, to give details about that something and to allow the users to do something about it. The problem arises when designers forget that Internet users have a surprising short attention span. Studies have shown that if you can’t capture a user’s attention in less than five seconds, they’ll navigate away from the page.

Drafting your content before you build your Web site is a great way to supplement your design process. By actually having something on your Web site to look at, it will give you an idea of how a completed page will look and feel. It will also give you an idea if you have too much, or not enough information on each page.

How do you want to say it?

The tone and presentation of your writing can be as important to your Web site’s design as any flashing green button or tricky JavaScript code widget. Ideally, you’ll be building the Web site around the content, so your design decisions may be affected by the information you’ll be trying to convey. Likewise, you’ll need to temper the tone of your writing with the Web site’s intended audience.

If, for example, you’re designing a Web site for a nonprofit after-school volunteer athletics program for teens, you would want to convey an image that teens, parents and the administrators of the program can all associate with. You can accomplish this not only through the design choices you make, but the language and tone of the information within. Likewise, if the Web site you’re developing is a portfolio Web site — yours, ideally — you need to show that not only do you speak the language of design and code, but also that of a Web site user.

When in doubt: K.I.S.S.

That’s "Keep It Simple and Short." The average attention span of an Internet user is five seconds. That means that, on average, a person will spend five seconds scanning a page for the information they need. If they can’t find it, then chances are they’ll be clicking away to another Web site.

Drafting your content is only the first step. Once you’ve finalized the content (or come close), you need to make sure that your content is legible and quickly scannable. If you can’t give your Web site users the information they need in 700 words or less, you’ve probably lost them. Using logical navigation, secondary headings, relevant titles, and above all, a legible font, makes it easy for your users to navigate and locate information quickly and effectively.

In as much as good design preparation will make the development go smoother (and much quicker), taking the extra amount of time to draft and edit your content can take your Web site designs to the next level — without having to use flashing green widgets.