1What is online journalism? - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

Design your web resource 191
generation’ sites. By 1997, he had moved onto the third
generation. These sites, according to Siegel, ‘give visitors a
complete experience’. They should ‘pull visitors through by
tantalizing them with something exciting on every page’. They
have front doors, entry tunnels (a short sequence of pages to lead
or tempt you into a site), a core site area with pages fanning out
from it and a defined exit point or tunnel so you can see your
visitors off the virtual premises as any good host would, with a
parting gift such as a prize draw entry.
This is a completely different way of visualizing the user
experience – more guided and more linear. It is striking that
Siegel frequently uses metaphor to describe his approach. He
compares visiting a site to going to a restaurant – a very ‘real
world’ experience. He emphasizes the virtual element of online as
much as the ability to deliver large and variable volumes of
information to a range of different users. Yet you can be absolutely
certain that David Siegel’s sites are carefully structured and such
structures should not be excluded from your thinking when
developing your site. Be open to all influences. Go and visit one of
his ‘restaurants’. You may get a taste for the cuisine.
The important thing is to have a structure, however you modify
any of the above models. Too many web sites mushroom without
form or shape. Therein lies disaster. 6
Once you have grouped all your content and chosen a structure,
you are still only part way through the design process. You may
think that it is too early to be thinking about production, but
remember this is a concurrent, not consecutive process. So while
you are scrutinizing your content, you may as well also categorize
it by type. This will help you devise your implementation
programme, as certain types of content will provide a bed-rock
and may be less time-consuming and costly to produce. This is the
content you may wish to build first, when you get round to it.
6 Structure – shallow or deep, web or hierarchy – is not the whole picture. Steve
Krug (2000) feels that what really counts is ‘not the number of clicks it takes to
get me to what I want (although there are limits) but rather how hard each click
is – the amount of thought required, and the amount of uncertainty about
whether I am making the right choice.’ Satisfying that demand will depend on a
number of other factors other than structure.