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Designing an organization’s home page
Dr. Scott MooreMREACH: Summer 2008

This page describes the process you should go through in order to design and create an organization's home page. Online resources that would be helpful in this process are available on this page. (Last year's version is here.)

  1. Sign up for Google account. If you already have a personal Google account, forget about it and get one for your company.
  2. Sign up for GMail account — use your company's Google account when signing up for this GMail account.
  3. Basic information: You need to have decided on the following information before you continue.
    1. Organization name
    2. Tagline
    3. Page title
  4. Go to Pages and create a site (under your company's Google account).
    1. Before creating any pages, go to "Site settings".
    2. Decide what layout your site will have (2-column? 3-column?). When creating each page, first use "Change Layout". I recommend that you use a three-column layout.
    3. Decide what general colors your site will use. Use the "Change Look" tool to set the look of you page. Keep colors to a minimum. Be consistent with this usage throughout your site.
    4. Keep graphics to a minimum. If you use photos, use real images of real people or products connected to your company.
  5. Make a list of Web site actions, events, and resources.
    1. Go to 3-5 Web sites of companies who sell similar products. Write down every possible thing that you want your site to do, putting each separate thing on a separate scrap of paper.
    2. When you have written down all of these tasks, capabilities, and pieces of information, put them into related groups.
    3. Come up with a label for each of these groups.
    4. These group labels will become the major menu headers in the left menu bar of your site. The scraps of paper will become separate menu items (and/or related pages on your site).
  6. Main tasks
    1. Come up with a list of the one to four main tasks that users will undertake when they visit the site. (The best example of this is at Bloglines.) These should be the reason that your site exists, and should be tasks that are central to the existence of your company (not just the Web site, but the company).
    2. Provide a clear starting point (probably in the center of the page) on the home page for each of these four main tasks.
  7. Reveal the contents of your site. (Think about Amazon or Sephora.) Don't just provide links to the content (though you should do that) — show some of it on the home page. You should probably put this in the center column of your site.
  8. In the right column of your site offer easy access to recent home page features. You should put all of your navigation aids in this column.