Developing Content For the Web

Visitors expect a web page to quickly provide the information that they want. They generally will not read long pages of text on-line because computer screens are not as easy to read as a printed page.

If you must present long pages of text (like this, for example), give your visitors short-cuts, like a list of topics with links to specific sections at the top of the page. Or, divide the material into several pages with links from one to another.

Put the most important part of your message at the top of the page. Statistics collected on millions of web users show that almost half of all visitors view pages at a resolution of 800 X 600 pixels. This means is that after taking into acount the browser toolbar, status line, and other window dressing, they might only see 20 or 25 lines of text on their screen at one time, even on a 17" monitor. If your punch line is buried down on line 30 or 40, they will never see it if they don’t see a reason to scroll down the page.

Some of your pages need to be long and detailed; your privacy policy, for example (you do have a privacy policy, don’t you? Look at ours to get an idea of what you need). Otherwise, keep your content short and to the point:

• Use short paragraphs and sentences
• Use bullet points for lists of items
• Use headings to help users find information quickly
• Use white space to separate topics
• Spell check every page
• Have someone else proofread each page

Text and Fonts

Anyone who uses a computer to prepare a flyer or a brochure is used to having dozens of creative fonts, in any size that you might want, to chose from. You also have absolute control — from size and spacing, to position on the page - over how they will be displayed on the page.

Preparing text for the web is different in a couple of very important ways. First, you no longer have complete control over how the page will be displayed on the visitor’s screen. This is because each web browser program, even different versions of the same program, will display pages slightly differently. Also, the user has choices that they can make regarding size and font that will be used to display text. The size of their screen and resolution of the "window" in which they view your page will also have an affect on how the text is displayed.

The second difference is the limited number of fonts that can be used to display text. The web is designed to be used by people anywhere, using any kind of computer. In order to achieve that universal access, the developers of the web and the browsers that are used to view it, limited the basic set of fonts that would be supported everywhere to two basic styles:

Serif: Times New Roman, Times, Georgia and generic serif

Sans-serif: Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Verdana, and generic sans-serif

If you use a font that is not supported, and is not on the user’s computer, then the page will be displayed using the browser’s default font. This can really affect how your page looks, so the best thing is to stick with the list of supported fonts for all of your text.

But, you say, you’ve seen plenty of web sites that use fancy fonts — how do they get around this problem? It’s simple — they create graphics using whatever fonts they choose and place them on their pages like pictures. That’s why you mostly see non-standard fonts used for things like headings, buttons, captions on pictures, etc. The body of the text will almost always be one of the standard fonts.

If you really like a particular font, couldn’t you just make the whole page a graphic? Sure, but there are a number of downsides to that:

• Graphics take a lot more file space than text and take can much longer to be displayed — more information about graphics.
• Graphic images have a fixed size — they don’t expand or contract to fit in the browser window.
• The quality of the graphic text may not be as crisp or clear as text that is displayed by the browser using a standard font.
• The large search engines, like Google and Yahoo, cannot read text that is in a graphic image. As a result, they may not show your site when users enter search terms that include words that your site uses (see our section on promoting your site for more information on search engines).

Serif or Sans-serif — Which to Choose?

When it comes to picking between the standard fonts, a general rule of thumb is to use serif styles for the body of your text: it makes it easier for your eye to follow lines of text across the page. It does look more formal, though, so you might want to use a sans-serif font if the overall design of your site is casual or modern. You might compensate by making the text a little larger.

Sans-serif fonts, with their clean, simple shape, tend to be more legible than serif fonts when used for short blocks of type. This means that they work well for headings and other places where you want to get an idea across very quickly. They are also commonly used for captions on buttons or navigation bars.