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Designing an Educational Website
Focus on teaching
An educational website should be constructed in such a way that it's main focus is teaching. It should focus on high quality content to enrich the learning experience of visitors. Your website should be centered on educational quality, not the quantity of pages (or text) and the look of your site.
If you keep your website interesting, clear and focussed your can presume that your visitors will appreciate your efforts and that they will respond positively. The following outline will present the general guidelines for the construction of an educational website.
Avoid using animations. - Having said that, there are occasions when an animation will aid in the presentation of certain ideas. But, in most cases animations are a distraction to your visitors and the information that you are trying to convey.
Use a white background. - Various background colors have been tested for visitor appeal and when it comes to serious reading, website visitors prefer black text on a white background.
Consistent use of fonts, colors and page layout. All of your webpages should have a common layout and theme. Mixing up text fonts, using too much color variation, and being inconsistent with your page layouts will not do.
Keep individual pages clean and simple. - Anything added should have a purpose (yes esthetics and humour also have purpose, but not of highest importance for this task).
Streamline the site to the busy visitor. - People are in a hurry these days so it is important that your visitors can find what they are looking for quickly. Navigation through your website should be simple and user friendly.
Note: In general, subjective comments, humorous remarks, other entertaining items (e.g. animations) may be provided but should be separate from the core subject being taught.
Organization and Structure
Learning is more likely to occur if there is a logical and sequential organization of information. Learning is maximized when there is a definite structure to learning activities such as a step-by-step tutorial. Tutorials are one of the hallmarks of the internet and find their best use when teaching a subject, idea and/or method of doing something.
Organize your website around your core subject. The website should be structured in such a way that the emphasis is always upon what you are trying to teach. Don't digress, stay on your topic and be as clear and simple as possible.
Structure your subject matter into short concise statements and paragraphs. Don't be frivolous or try to impress your visitors with your knowledge. The object of any educational website is to impart some lasting knowledge to people who are seeking a better understanding of what you are teaching.
Wants, Needs, and Aspirations
Learning occurs more easily when the content matches the wants, needs, or aspirations of your visitors. Relate the information taught to how it affects them or how it will help them accomplish their goals. Visitors must see the relevance of the information to themselves and their lives.
Summary
Everyone is busy. Some people are under-informed and may need more info on particular items. Other people know most of the content you offer and want to find out particular points quickly without having to search through unneeded info.Try to cater to all of your visitors. This can be difficult, but keep in mind the educational website is for the visitors convenience not principally a self expression area.
Gene DeFazzio is the webmaster and author of the Rocketface(R) Workshop http://www.rocketface.com/ - A website for beginning webmasters and home of the webmasters tutorial "How to Design a Website".
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gene_DeFazzio
Tips for Creating Good Website Designs
A lot can be said about Internet advertising and online commerce but there is no doubt that they are quite profitable business activities. Advertising on television or in print is less effective than promoting a company on the Internet. But to make a good online commercial targeted to millions of potential clients you need very good website designs. There is nothing more important than good website design when marketing a product online is concerned. You no longer need flashing three sentence ads in giant text on a white screen. Simply said, good website designs are high tech and eye pleasing. They actually resemble a television commercial.
Of course, only the good ones do. There are many websites which are not high tech and could not certainly be taken for good website designs. Personal pages could be loud and very colourful but it comes as a big surprise that many companies still rely on old school early 90’s type of web design. There are two possible reasons why they don’t have good websites designs. The first one is that they don’t fully realize the importance of the good design in marketing and advertising on the Internet. The second reason might be for they don’t consider Cyberspace as a major source of income. Though, it is certain that online business will keep on blooming in the years to come.
I suppose the major factor when designing a website is usability. A site with good usability means that not only is the site easy to use but it is also comprehensible for the potential customers. This is the bases for any good website designs.
Other important factors are good content and originality. A reader should have lots of information on display; they should be able to review discussions of a product and service. The content should be informative and interesting but professional, as well. Even though looks matter, good website designs are more about content that graphic production.
However the importance of graphics should not be underestimated. This includes colour, style of text, image and design graphics. You can give a more professional look to a website with a single line or a bullet well placed. Good website designs contain all these things. It is vital not to turn off customers by putting any pictures (whether of people or nature) if inappropriate to the setting. It is also important that graphics have good quality but low file size because if they don’t meet these requirements then the customers might grow impatient while waiting for the file to load.
Other things which should be taken into considerations are compatibility and navigation. Apart from Internet Explorer there are people using Netscape or Firefox as their usual web browser. Thus it is important that the site is compatible with different web browsers or computers. Of course, this will make the designing of the web site harder but it would be worth it.
It might sound easy to have a good website but remember that good website designs are hard work and a billion dollar industry.
Morgan Hamilton offers expert advice and great tips regarding all aspects concerning computers. Get the information you are seeking now by visiting Website Designs
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Morgan_Hamilton
Ten Reasons Why Visitors Hate Your Website
1) If the navigates is to hard to get around they will leave very fast. Make easy to get around and each web page should link to your homepage.
2) All web surfers get frustrated when they find a lot of dead links on a web site. You should clean them up soon as you see them. You can use spiders to find dead links on your web site.
3) Popups are the most hated advertisement of them all. They just wanted to read your web page, not get a face full of advertisement. If you need to make money off your site there are other ways and some bring in more cash.
4) Making your text hard to read is really the dumbest thing you can do. Many people are thinking do you have a brain, so make sure the text can be viewed without any trouble. There are some surfers that can't see real good, so you should think of them too.
5) Slow loading pages really take to much time out of the visitors day, well at least that's the way he feels.
6) On some sites music is great to have on there, but most site should stay away from it. If they want to hear some music they can turn the radio on.
7) Blocks of text with no breaks between paragraphs. Visitors won't read the all article most of the time, instead they scan it for what they are most interested in. You are likely doing this as we speak on this article.
8) To many colors or colors that match on a web page can turn visitors off. It makes it hard for you to read and view the content.
9) Flash looks great, but takes to much time to load for 56K modems. Remember most people still don't have high speed internet.
10) No right click scripts make the visitor feel as if you are saying you cannot be trusted. And don't forget it's very easy to get around that.
If you have any questions or comments please e-mail me on gerald@12234455.co.za or call me on +27-0720390184.
Gerald Crawford: born in South Africa, studied electronics, telecommunication, eco-travel and african travel concepts. He taught responsible tourism in South Africa and the United Kingdom. If you have any questions or comments please e-mail me on. E-mail Address: gerald@12234455.co.za Website Address: http://www.12234455.co.za
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gerald_Crawford