Boot Camp

Web Authoring Boot Camp
be able to intuitively relate the actions s/he needs to perform on the web page. The broad
goal of usability is:
• Present the information to the visitor in a clear and concise way.
• Give the correct choices to the visitors, in a very obvious way.
• Remove any ambiguity regarding the consequences of an action.
• Put the most important thing in the right place so the visitor can interact as you
want.
Usability is often confused with accessibility. However, it comes at a more general approach-
ensuring everyone (disability, disadvantages, or totally able) is able to use the
website in the most straightforward manner. This includes having things that are easy to
find in prominent spots, ensuring common or repeated tasks on a website can be shortcutted,
and most especially designing the GUI (graphical user interface) so that anyone can
easily and intuitively “get it”.
Usability requires planning for layout and design concepts, and also for the actual content
organization itself. For instance, the logical flow of information, in terms of important to
useful to nice to filler, helps you determine what goes above the fold on a page, how to
divide with subheaders, and how much content text to include on a page.
Website Priorities
Knowing the different priorities a website may have, and remembering who the site is
centered around, is important to making the site usable and ultimately successful for the
client’s purpose.
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• Visitor-centered: Engaging, successful, and marketable web design comes from
remembering who really uses the website, and who puts the bread and butter on
the client’s table – the visitor. The visitor will make the decision to stay or leave,
to bookmark or forget the site, to order or move to a competitor, to come once or
return again and again.
• Client-centered: The client naturally has important communication goals – marketing,
promotion, sales, influence. These purposes do drive the nature of the site.
At the same time, clients often need to be tamed to help their website achieve
their purpose - Axiom #1: A website is a method to communicate key information
to and prompt action from an audience. A web author’s job often includes keeping
the client’s desires from getting in the way of the visitor’s needs.
• Designer-centered: In other words – You. Designers get into this business because
they are creative and need, in one way or another, to create attractive order