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Plan your page
What information will you include and how to organize it
During this phase, you hammer out your vision and goals for your site. You should know:
- What is the purpose of your page? (customer service, marketing, informing or educating?)
- What content you already have access to and what do you still need to find?
- How you will present it (straight text? static graphics? multimedia?)
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| What is the purpose of your page? |
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Here at the college, the main purpose of most pages are to provide customer service, inform visitors through education and the presentation of ideas, or market our programs. Once you decide on your purpose, focus your content around this. Information should flow and follow the ABCs - accuracy, brevity, and clarity.
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| What content do you already have access to, and what do you still need to find? |
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Most information placed on the website is provided in some other form already. It may be in a pamphlet, brochure, the general catalog, or on another Nevada State Higher Education agency or federal website. There is no need to recreate the wheel if it is not necessary. If the information is already available, either customize it specifically for the Colllege of Southern Nevada or link to it.
Another option is to write the information from scratch. If you choose to go in this direction, who you choose to write the information should be an important choice. We are responsible for the information provided and it should be written by someone senior, well-versed on the topic, and able to simplify it in terms easily understood.
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| How will you present the information? |
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The most common factor among all web pages is the reader. Although you may be targeting a specific audience, remember readability is an important factor when it comes to reader understanding. This is important because the reader may be anyone, such as with a newspaper article or broadcast. The standard reading level of most readers is on a ninth-grade level when planning for general audiences such as the Internet. Carnegie Mellon has an excellent style guide to use as a resource. Elements of Style is another good resource.
The most important information, and resources should be at the top of the page. This way if a reader decides not scroll, they have the essentials of your information. Although static text is the style most web sites use, other ways of displaying information are available such as tables, graphs, videos, etc. Don't be afraid to use more than one way of presentation to reach your audience.
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