There are lots of good and bad school webpages; the best ones provide real information in a quickly scannable layout.
On any school-related webpage, you’re striving for presentation of information, not a visual display of your talents (but be sure to create a special “Lolla-pa-looza” page about and by you as a person!).
So, here are my Top 10 Tips based on more than 25 years of Web Design reading, training, and experience.
- Keep it short–no more than 2 or 3 screens to scroll. Use links to other pages of support material.
- Name of school/teacher. It doesn’t have to be huge, just noticeable enough to identify. I can’t tell you how often I see pages with no idea of who they belong to.
- Use the Title tag with school/teacher name/abbreviation and page name!
The Title is displayed along the very top edge of the browser window; it’s what’s displayed when your page is bookmarked and is usually what search engines “spider” for. - Margins, margins, margins, margins…did I mention margins? And centering text is not a margin—that only makes it even more difficult to read.
- Use section headings or highlighted text to separate and define different topics.
- Use short paragraphs and bullet or numbered lists. Forget “writing rules” for print; keep paragraphs to only two or three sentences for easier reading. Bullet and number lists summarize and encapsulate important information for easy recall. Remember, this is online, not print; you want everything concise, easy to find.
- Your email address. Can be a mailto link in the “Page created/updated by” line.
- Date the page was last updated—month and year are usually sufficient.
- Link back to homepages (teacher/school/district) and any important intermediate pages yours is linked from.
- Image of school logo/mascot/identity somewhere on the page, at least as a link back to the school homepage. Use the ALT value in the image tag to add slogans for search engines to target you.
How to put “secret” information on a webpage:
Type the info, then highlight and make the font color the same as the background color. Teach students to highlight the area to see the info. No handouts, no remembering—it’s right there when they need it and they seem to think it’s some kind of magic and you’re the magician!
More Top 10s for Web Design
Stanford’s Guidelines for Website Credibility – Do people believe and trust your website?