FREE CSS standards compliant template with any new licence of our CMS

Website interface design, usability and compliancy features

1. Logo

Positioned top left as a recognition point. People look here immediately to check they're at the right place, before doing anything else. The logo is commonly used a link back to the home page in case your audience looses their way.

2. Strapline and telephone number

A good strapline should extend reassurance for any new visitors about what you do, nothing fancy or flash, keep it direct. Although you may want to be like Amazon when you get older and not have to answer the phone don't turn away potential prospects before you've even had a chance to talk to them.

3. Primary navigation

There are now many ways with which you can now navigate a website, but you should still always in some way offer a constant navigational menu. Think of it this way, why should someone bother to invest the time trying to find information for you when there's plenty of other sites that can. Different active states of the buttons act as flag indicators to your browsing audience.

4. Features

These simple almost throw away features add a lot of advantages which are often taken for granted.

1. Print - often present as a stripped out stylesheet, which doesn't often print very well. We have a specific print stylesheet designed specifically for printing pages from a web browser, which can also be tailored to your requirements.
2. Send to a friend - if someone likes something you have to say then make it easy for them to spread the word. Clicking on this icon will pass an ID of the current page through to a form, which will then email the details as a link to the site.
3. Bookmark - people are book marking site's like crazy these days and sharing their lists with others. This is the simplest call to action that should not be overlooked.
4. A+ A- - Text increase / decrease size is a commonly seen feature that has been buried in the tools of your web browser for years. Although it's easy to implement a site can easily break up when the size changes. This template should stand fast even when pushed to extremes.

5. Text decoration

Heading 1 through 6 are styled in alternate colours in decreasing size in ratio with each other. Colours have been chosen with the greatest contrast in foreground and background to improve the browsing experience for the visually impaired. Hyperlinks have retained the default colour settings with visited, unvisited and where hover text reverses the pallete to add movement and further emphasis on the link.

6. Short button

The buttons are dynamic so they will expand to the width of the text, it's up to you to keep it within the parameters with the length of your labelling. The button is a great call to action, but should not be over used otherwise you'll defeat the objective.

7. Dynamic content

Content can be pulled from other modules and be used to populate a page dynamically. The whole system is made up these content types, but there's a lot of creative fun to be had when pulling in data from all over the site presenting it in one place. You can even tailor user experiences through logins.

8. 3 Column layout

Nested tables can be introduced to the content management to establish a number of more complex posibilities. Although this is great for presentation, it adds lot's of code to the page so use with caution. Alternative layouts are endless with the use CSS for more perminent fixtures.

9. News  teasers

A perfect example of dynamically driven content which is managed centrally through our News blog module, the system has a number of content types to cater for a number of presentational requirements.

10. News snippets

Taping into the same News blog module data this presentation of a blog article demonstrates another way of targeting presenting the same relational information.

11. RSS feed

RSS (Real Syndication Service) feeds are becoming a must for any active website with content being published regularly. It allows third party readers to pick up the feeds and present a list of articles. 

12. Big button

Works in exactly the same way as a small button, but offers extend visual presence especially at the foot of the page, which is when the browser may get the chance to think about leaving your site. Give them options.

13. Footer breadcrumbs

Offers and additional navigational option at the foot of the page as well as offering another replication of your chosen keywords.

14. Back to top

Rather than having something else to have to manage through the CMS we worked this link into the default template offering further familiarity with your site knowing it's there on every page.

15. Footer links

Watch footers continually grow as they start to get used for all sorts of stuff, if only to eliminate the need for the end user to have to scroll to the top again simply to navigate to the next page.

16. Company details

Offer additional reassurance by presenting your company address in the footer and if it's worth promoting publish your length of trading.

17. Global navigatin

These links will also presented on every page (unless instructed otherwise) without cluttering up your Primary navigation and making it overly complex. Additional, contact information drives end users to the central resource for further information. 

18. Standards compliancy icons

These icons are presented as a qualification for passing strict XHTML and CSS guidelines, with the production of each and every website produced as a replica complying with all the latest standards at the point of delivery. Due to the nature of publishing content things change and should therefore, be checked with some frequency.