Create a Business Website

Organizing and Storyboarding a Web Site

Before you start designing web pages you should always do the following:

• Collect the information you want to put on the Web site.
• Organize the information into topics.
• Lay out the topics to create a storyboard, choosing breaks in information as page separators.
• Create a graphic logo or theme to be used on each page of your site.

To be able to easily maintain Web pages, you should create a separate Web document or page for each topic that you identify. The starting point for a Web site is referred to as the home page or index page. You provide navigation links from your home page to the other pages in your Web site. There is no limit to the number of pages in a Web site.

Web page organization can be approach through three different design structures: Linear Layout and Hierarchical Layout, or a combination of the two.

• The linear approach is appropriate when you want the user to visit each page sequentially without skipping around. Computer based training, procedural task instructions or following a story line, are typical examples.
• The most common way to structure your web documents is in a hierarchical layout. This layout usually begins with a master page, or home page. This page usually has many links that lead to other pages, and these pages, in return, contain a link back to the home page.
• Since many web sites are very extensive, usually they will contain a combination of linear and hierarchical layouts.

There are two considerations in the design of a Web site:

• You must inform and guide the Web user through a complex body of linked information.
• You must create a visual design storyboard appropriate for interactive computer displays composed in HTML.

Most Web sites contain more than one page, so matching the look and feel of each page to a common standard will help the user to better understand the logical content and physical layout of the site.

Storyboarding refers to the process of arranging a sequence of images or dialogs. You can plan the sequence of pages and indicate all the hyperlinks, inline images, downloadable files, and text that will make up each page in your Web site. Examples of storyboarding are the production of animated movies and comic books. Storyboarding is especially useful when a team of designers is building a Web site. Team members should meet to discuss the division of site content into specific pages.

Steps for Storyboarding

1. Define the purpose of your presentation and the audience or reader that you are planning to address.
2. Break up your content into main topics and group related information under a single topic.
3. Use paper-based templates or flowcharting software to create a rough outline of each Web page starting with the home page.
4. Provide the following information for each page.
• A descriptive title
• The main heading
• The subheadings
• The purpose of the page
• A description of content
• The type of images
• A description of the links