An easy and short introduction to everything.

Big companies don't get it. (some) Fancy designers just don't get it. This is an overview of some fundamental toys (1) to help you make good websites.

The web is about a lot more than making "good looking" websites!

It's about the web. It's a new medium. The old rules do not apply.

Here's some toys and how they can help make good websites:

Information architecture.

Information architecture is the organising of information so it becomes meaningful and easy to use. IA's typically design navigation, do the labelling and so on. They often get to make cool sitemaps too.

Cluster analysis.

Examples: Yahoo's "people who bought this book also bought ...". Cluster analysis can also be used to determine how a whole set of data (documents, content) should be organised. It looks for patterns in data. It's fun to play with.

Usability testing.

A very powerful method of improving websites. One of the most neglected aspects of most websites is how easy to use they are (not). You can dramatically improve usability, not by listening to what people say, but by observing what they do. Jakob Nielsen is a name to remember.

Information foraging theory.

Related to the foraging theory from anthropology: people hunt for information, and they will keep hunting on a certain place (website) until they feel they have exhausted it and it becomes more interesting to go somewhere else for information.

Because going somewhere else is an efffort (searching for and getting to know an unknown website), the estimated returns must be higher than the return the user can expect from staying at the same place.

Self evolving systems.

Example: the "web of trust" on epinions. Instead of rules being programmed into them, systems can evolve their own rules.

Content and presentation.

Programmers want to separate content from presentation. This means they can have one source (preferably in some XML format), and from that automatically produce a web version, a book, a WAP (2) version and so on.

Content Management Systems.

CMS's are used to make managing content easier. They typically include a web based content creation tool, versioning, and lots of other nifty features. One big discussion on CMS's is to use an existing one or roll your own.

(1) Putting the fun in fundamental!
(2) Note for future readers: WAP was an HTML-like protocol for web access on cellphones.

Article history: written by Peter Van Dijck on January 7, 2001. Published here on Jan 7. Added CMS's Jan 8.