You’re a great writer. You’ve got a full inventory of things to write about to compliment your commanding grasp of the English (or whatever) language. To quickly get from A to B you decide to throw a site together quickly so that you can start writing with a minimum amount of muss and fuss.

There’s only one problem: your website is a Frankenstein that visitors have a hard time reading. Not because of your writing… and not because of the topic… but because of the design of the site. That’s why it’s important to visit the design elements of your site just as often as you visit the actual content.

Because Frankensteined design elements can influence the read-ability of your site’s content. I could talk about the major design elements of a site. But I figure most people have that down. So instead, today’s Content Workshop is going to look at 4 smaller - dare I say nit-picky - design elements that can have a serious impact on whether or not people can consume your content.

Layout

You may be thinking “hey… layout isn’t small or nit-picky”. But just give me time. I’m not talking about the overall layout here. I’m talking about the finer bits. There are elements of your site’s layout that never change, regardless of the page someone is on (or at least there should be). Are those elements always in the same place? Do they always do the same thing?

For example, I recently visited a site that had a big, honkin’ RSS icon at the top of the main index page. It wasn’t part of an article or blog post. It wasn’t something that looked like it had just been added. From my outside perspective, it looked like a part of the basic frame of the site. Except that it disappeared from every page other than the index.

That was a bad move for a couple of reasons. For starters, most people aren’t going to subscribe to your site after simply looking at the index page. They’re going to dig or read a specific article or find some integral part of your site that they just can’t live without. You’re missing some potential sign-ups by not making your feed accessible from every single page. Second of all, it just looks strange to have something that big and obvious disappear. For a moment or two I thought the site was broken.

It’s all about consistency. People want things to be in the same spot every time they come to visit you. They don’t want to have to hunt or relearn anything. By keeping the major elements of your site’s layout in a consistent, logical place from page to page you’re making it much easier for people to use - and therefore reuse - your site.

Navigation

Navigation goes hand-in-hand with layout. A lot of people will follow a link or a search engine result into your site. They won’t come straight to the index page. A good, consistent navigation system makes it much easier for them to find additional content. And when it’s easier for them to find that content, they’re more likely to take the time to search it out.

Your navigation should also be the same from page to page. I was at a site just a few hours ago that used linked numbers for page jumps on some pages and drop down menus for page jumps on others. I wasn’t sure what the difference was. But because the navigation system wasn’t the same on each page, I expected there to be some sort of alternate behavior from the drop down menus. There wasn’t. Think of a control panel. If there’s a big flashing red button and a simple, black button next to it… would you really expect them to do the exact same thing?

Terminology

Just about every site on the Internet has its own set of terminology. Whether you’re talking about technical jargon related to a specific industry or just the nomenclature a site owner has devised to organize their site, you’ve got a language all your own. How do you help visitors learn and understand that language?

For example, every post in our Content Workshop series starts with the words “Content Workshop”. That’s consistency. Over time, people know what kind of post to expect from a “Content Workshop”. We use our home-grown glossary plug-in to define industry terms that every reader might not understand. It’s a more direct approach to terminology, but it’s also consistent. And when people see the dotted underline around here, they quickly learn that they’re looking at a word with a definition behind it.

Again, consistency is the key here. Don’t call your series one thing today and something totally different tomorrow. Don’t write about your “business” today and then refer to it as your “project” the next day. Be conscious of how you describe things and the terminology that you use and I can guarantee you’ll have a less confused (and more engaged) readership.

Text Elements

I’m talking about basic, HTML 101 here. Don’t use a bunch of different fonts and colors on your site unless they actually mean something. I was shown a site a couple of weeks ago that used different colors for links that did different things. For example, blue links pointed to places where visitors would interact with the site… green links pointed to more information… and orange links made up the site’s general navigation. It made perfect sense and, when combined with the wording of the links themselves, let me know exactly what was going to happen when I clicked that link.

Format your writing using the same heading, bold/italics/underline conventions from page to page as well. If sections are going to be divided with standard-sized bold text, then do that everywhere. If you’re going to use H1 tags on article titles, then use H1 tags on every article title.

Conclusions

The underlying theme to all of this is consistency. I know you’re in a hurry to get your content on the web. I know you’d rather get your thoughts out there than mess with code. But your thoughts and your content will be much more effective with some consistent design elements backing them up.

When folks feel comfortable at your site - and know what to expect - they’re likely to spend more time there and come back more often. If things disappear and reappear, change size, color, or position, or otherwise change from page to page, post to post, or section to section… you’re dealing with a Frankenstein site.

And you remember how the villagers reacted to Frankenstein, right? You don’t want them chasing your site out of town with pitchforks… do you?