Principles of Web Site Design

QuikSite software has been created for a situation where it is desired that a large amount of information should be made available in a web site and where that information is freqently changed or expanded. It is expected that many people will be involved creating or updating material for the site but very few people will have skills in HTML.

The software is currently being used to support more than 4000 pages and lots of source material is stored with few or no HTML enhancements. A typical format is text that was generated in Microsoft Word and stored with the "Save as" command using the format "MS-DOS Text with Line Breaks (*.txt)". If the text includes enhancements such as boldface or italic fonts or lists, these can be preserved with the "Save as html" command. An alternative format frequently used is a scanned document with text converted to character format and similarly stored as an ascii text file. Production of these source materials can be done by people with word processing skills.

The site is supported by software which which sweeps through all the source material, generating each page, and if the page has changed vs. the one in the home computer, it writes out the revised page and flags it as needing an upload. Every day, at least a few pages in our web sites change and are newly uploaded. Maintenance is not tedious because it is all automatic. Improvement of source material is spread over quite a number of people, and the number of people is easily expanded because word processing skill is all that is needed for most material.

We recommend that web sites be designed respecting the following principles.

• The home page should load in 20 seconds or less.
• If graphics, or frames, or Java is used which some browsers cannot handle, then a simpler version of the web site should be available so that everyone can access it.
• Design should not get in the way of content, it should enhance content. There is no reason to be clever simply for the sake of being clever.
• The web site should evolve over time in a way that improves its usefulness and the satisfaction of visitors. It will become outdated if it does not evolve.

If marketing perspective is brought to web site design, the following additional principles may be important.

The following are proposed to enhance the "gf" web site.

""The following was placed as an advertisement in the New York Times on March 17, 1999 by Hewlett Packard. We think it is a good image of where the web is headed, and our web sites should be in step with this evolutionary trend.

A rich plate of food spanning two full pages of the New York Times is shown. "I hope I can finish this before the ambulance gets here." A reasonable thought, when you consider the implications of e-services. Here's the scenario. You've got a heart condition. You're wearing a small monitor that sends a constant signal to a medical service your hospital subscribes to. Minutes before you even know there's anything wrong, bids for emergency services are going out automatically through the Internet. Paramedics are dispatched, the best cardioligist within 20 minutes of your location is tracked down and a prescription is electronically sent to a pharmacy that's confirmed to have your medication in stock. But there's more. This service contracts with another service that collects heart data from anywhere in the world. So this same scenario plays out whether you're in Paris, New York or Bangkok. Look what's happening here. Businesses and devices are seamlessly linked together on the Internet. It's not about websites. It's about the explosion of the service based economy. The next chapter of the Internet is about to be written. And it has nothing to do with you working the Web. Instead, the Internet will work for you. (Hewlett Packard) ""