Designing for web publishing

Allowing for varying content

One of the more challenging aspects of website design is that content may change each time a user visits a page. On the Your Dogs Heart website (www.yourdogsheart.com), the web server randomly selects a Heart Healthy Tip for the sidebar each time the page is viewed (see Figure 4). We did this to ensure that each tip gets its fair share of visibility. This feature posed two challenges. First, each tip requires a different amount of vertical real estate. This means that the other sidebar elements will be displayed higher or lower on the page, depending on which tip is displayed. Second, there is the issue of continuity. We never know which tips will appear on which page, so we don't know whether the tip will be related in any way to other content on the page.

Figure 4. A tip is selected at random each time the page is refreshed.

During the design phase, we spoke to our writer about this and decided that the tips would be in a sidebar along with the other sidebar content. This way, the tip would have a bit of separation from each page's main content, but still provide additional information about the site's main topic. In addition, the tips were written so that they would not be mistaken for being directly related to the main content area. Each tip also provided a link to see more tips.

Note: For more information and tips on writing for the web, visit Writing for the Web on useit.com.

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