Website flow and harmonies

[macrost]

When you are designing a brand new site, what are your focuses, i.e. how the layout flows. Where your eye lands and then goes around. Where do you usually start at?

I know there's a word for what I'm trying to describe :) but it's Friday and my brain is just about mush.

[Max_K]

Google for Eyetrack III. Should be the first result.

[martinibuster]

My focus is on the advertising space and bot traffic (and by extension human traffic).

The Harmony
It's surprising how many people get hung up on the look and feel then end up having to squeeze the advertising into awkward spaces. Unless your site doesn't show ads, always design the site with the ads in the back of your mind.

I reserve space for an adsense leaderboard and medium rectangles. I also plan space for the affiliate ad banners. So the article section should be able to accomodate a 468x60 banner, and naturally any smaller rectangles. If possible the left or right side should accomodate a 120x90 button banner.

The top of the page where the logo resides should also be able to accomodate a banner ad.

The Flow
The home page usually consists of blurbs from articles that you can click to. Along the sides is a primary menu allowing you to click through to the second level category sections of the website.

Within every second level category section there exists a supplemantary menu listing all the articles within that particular section. This way a bot has chance to follow a deep link to specific articles from the homepage (one click) then recirculate through all of the second level articles from the supplementary menu (two clicks).

If the bot follows the primary menu, it lands on the secondary level (one click), then follows the secondary menu to every article (two clicks).

[jo1ene]

Thanks, Max_K. Good read. Some of their findings are someewhat surprising. They seem to go counter to popular (widely held) theory. I can't find a date on it...Late 2003?