Website Planning

Essential Text Books

The books in this section form a core of texts that cover all the topics addressed during the Website Planning course. During the course, you will be asked to do weekly reading and in most cases, it will be from these books. Many of them are available from the library but you should probably aim to own a copy of 3 or 4 of them, with Aarron Walter's Building Findable Websites being top of your list.

Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond
by Aarron Walter

I've been waiting for someone to write this book for some time. Essentially, Building Findable Websites is a good practice guide for people who actually build websites and who want them found. It describes how web pages should be built in order to make them visible on the web and covers topics such as the correct use of markup, how to name your files and folders, custom 404s, site search and how to create original and attractive content.

Most of these ideas are not new but this is the first book to bring them all together in a logical form and to express them in a coherent manner. This book is a "must have" for all serious web designers. My only criticism of the book is that it is too short. The book ends with an excellent chapter called "Putting Findability Into Practice", which is an action plan that readers can use for their own website. However, there is more to the book than is written between its covers. A companion website includes 5 "bonus" chapters as PDFs that really should be a part of the book - the one on traffic analysis is particularly useful. Still, taken as a whole, this is an excellent body of work - thank you Aarron Walter.

Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond is available at Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 3 ~ view catalogue entry

Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience by James Kalbach

In days gone by, web navigation may have merited a chapter in a book on web design, but here is an entire volume dedicated to the topic and it tells you all you need to know. The book is thorough and considers navigation in the context of information architecture, interface design, usability, business priorities, vocabulary and accessibility (to name but a few) and begins with an overview of navigation and a discussion of navigation types. The book is well illustrated throughout in full colour and succeeds in its aim of being the most comprehensive book on the subject.

Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience is available at Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 3 ~ view catalogue entry

Don't Make Me Think (2nd edition) by Steve Krug

This book, subtitled "A common sense approach to web usability" is just that. It makes a point of stating the obvious and the not so obvious in order to give a complete picture of website usability. The book is printed in full colour and is thoughtfully illustrated - in fact, it's an object lesson in usability. Clear writing and wry humour make Krug's book a joy to read and he manages to get over some quite complicated ideas without you even noticing. There are also lots of excellent examples from real sites because as Krug points out "…you'll find that the sites I use as examples tend to be excellent sites with minor flaws. I think you can learn more from looking at good sites than bad ones." Well said.

If you follow all the excellent advice in this book, your websites will be a joy to use and your visitors will be able to find the information they are looking for, quickly and easily, with no blind alleys, no ambiguity and no frustration.

Don't Make Me Think is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 4 ~ view catalogue entry

Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger

More than six years after the original "Designing Wed Usability", comes an entirely new book from web usability guru Jakob Nielsen with its trademark no-nonsense cover design. This time however, his views are less hard line and he seems to accept that there is a balance to be struck between the aesthetic aspects of web design and absolute usability. This is a good thing. This may, in part, be the influence of his co-author who, I suspect is more pragmatic in her approach. Between them, they have written an excellent book and one that is bound to become as well read as Nielsen's original 2000 book.

There is a great deal of depth to the topics discussed and a great deal of authority in the way in which they are presented. Essentially, the book is the result of hundreds of hours of usability testing on a wide range of websites (although it does have a bias towards commercial and e-commerce sites). It is based on real-world testing and real-world research and as such it is an extraordinarily valuable work. One does wonder why Neilsen Norman Group would want to pass all this on but it is clear that their clients are large corporate businesses and they will most likely continue to do business with the group. So we, the ordinary working web designers get to benefit from this material at a very reasonable price.

Prioritizing Web Usability is printed in full colour with many excellent examples and is well structured and clearly written (well, what would you expect from experts in usability). Topics covered in the book include; the web user experience, searching, navigation, typography, writing for the web etc. There is very little to criticise here and they appear to have thought about everything relevant to the subject and more. Although he book covers many of the same topics as Steve Krug's but it takes a much more analytical approach and between them, the two books give a good balance.

Prioritizing Web Usability is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 3 ~ view catalogue entry

Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
by Jim Thatcher et. al.

The clear goal of this book is to be the authority on web accessibility and it scores well by all measures. In all, there are contributions from 11 authors; all experts in their own field and this gives the book considerable weight, both intellectually and physically (it's 648 pages long). It goes without saying that this book is comprehensive and it's certainly not a book you should aim to read cover-to-cover but the individual chapters are easily digestible and generally well written.

The book is intended to be geographically generic but obviously, regulations vary from one country to another. Fortunately, chapter 17 gives a run-down of regulations in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom and the European Union; both of which are important to us.

Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 3 ~ view catalogue entry

Get into bed with Google : top ranking search optimisation techniques
by Jon Smith

This is a small and humorously written book and yet it contains some excellent information and advice.

As we all know, the web is ruled by Google and it decides which websites are found and which are not. So it makes sense to know how it thinks and to design websites accordingly. The book also describes how to improve your PageRank, the importance (or not) of meta tags, why you should be listed in DMOZ, and a whole lot of other vital bits of information. There are other books on this topic but this one wins because it is clear and concise.

Get into bed with Google: top ranking search optimisation techniques is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 4 ~ view catalogue entry

Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists by Shirley Kaiser

This book isn't designed to be read cover-to-cover, it is a guide, in the form of a series of checklists covering a range of topics from coding through navigation, usability, information architecture, web site optimisation, accessibility (and others) to site launch - it's a pre-flight check. However, the coverage in each section is good and it should also be used as a guide to website development from the planning stage. The early chapters are particularly good and set out how a design brief should be put together. Topics such as "Establishing your Target Audience" and "Identifying your Initial Goals" are crucial to the success (or failure) of any web project and yet it is rarely mentioned in most text books.

Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists is available at Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 3 ~ view catalogue entry

The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C Stricchiola

The Art of SEO is comprehensive. It's not a short amusing guidebook to the As and Bs of SEO, it's a thorough explanation of the A to Z of SEO. The world of SEO is complex and confusing with many conflicting views but this book takes us calmly through the whole thing, giving excellent and well considered advice along the way. From the preface:

"We were inspired to create it (the book) because we have not previously seen a comprehensive work on the topic of SEO, and we believe that it is very much needed in our industry."

Quite right, and this book is set to become the standard text on the subject. In almost 600 pages and 13 chapters, it covers all the bases and the fact that it's written by 4 authors means you're getting the best advice from 4 experts. Some will want to read this book, cover-to-cover, others will dip into it and use it as a reference - the book lends itself to either method. If you only buy one book on SEO, this should be the one.

The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization is available at Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 3 ~ view catalogue entry

Essential Periodicals

The Web is ever-changing. New ideas in webpage design come and go and you need to keep up-to-date. Sadly, most web design text books are out-of-date after 2 or 3 years and the best way to stay in touch with emerging ideas is to subscribe to regularly published magazines. The three below are probably the best around but there is also a body of work published every day in blogs and it's well worth searching out the best of them.

.NET Magazine (published monthly)

.NET magazine has been around for a while but over the past few years it has matured into a magazine aimed at professional web designers and serious amateurs. The monthly articles are always relevant, well researched and full of useful information. The magazine has benefited from the work of an advisory panel of net worthies, including Andy Budd and Andy Clarke.

Each month also includes a number of technical articles on various topics relevant to the course by some excellent technical writers, including Craig Grannell. It is the best paper-based web design magazine and I recommend you take out a subscription.

A List Apart (online)

A List Apart "for people who make websites" is an e-zine that published new articles monthly. All content is free and there is now an extensive archive of articles on a range of relevant topics.

The articles are informative and well written and are often by well-known web luminaries like Dave Shea and Jeffrey Zeldman. This is all good stuff and free, so just read it and/or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Digital Web Magazine (online)

Digital Web Magazine publishes new articles at the rate of one or two a week, most weeks. The articles are of the same high quality as those at ALA and are also written by well-known authors. If anything, the range of topics here is wider than on ALA but they are always relevant. You can sign up for a weekly newsletter that will alert you to the publication of new articles or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

Smashing Magazine (online)

Smashing Magazine is a fantastic resource. Articles are published daily and its focus is graphic design for the web. That's not to say there aren't plenty of technical articles on CSS, usability and interface design - there are, but it's a great place to go for inspiration and design ideas. The site also has a tutorials section, covering many graphic techniques and applications like Photoshop.

Further reading

The books below all fill in gaps, overlap and expand upon the "Essential Text Books" listed above. You do not need to own them but they may be used as good alternatives or simply to explore a bit more of the subject.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd edition)
by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Moreville

If you need to know about Information Architecture, this book has just about everything. The book assumes no prior knowledge of this area and begins with a definition of Information Architecture. Actually, there are 4 of them, take your pick. The second definition seems to be the most widely applicable; "The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content".

Although the book gives you the hard detail, it is also very readable. It's written in a very easy style and the authors are always careful to point out that theirs isn't the only view on this subject. The book is, in fact, a comprehensive and well balanced primer and reference to this relatively new area of study. This second edition of the book is almost completely rewritten and there is very little flab on any of its 460 pages. This book is the essential guide to creating well-structured websites.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 1

Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design
by Jenifer Tidwell

This book is about interface or interaction design generally, but inevitably, many of the examples used are from the web. It begins by describing how people interact with interfaces like computer applications and web pages and then goes on to describe how best to arrange content and design navigation in order to accommodate peoples preferences and prejudices. It is a well-written book, printed in full-colour and using some very good examples that clearly illustrate the points being made.

Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 2

The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett

This is a relatively slim volume (at just under 200 pages) that delivers a single message but that message is very important. This book is based upon the concept of “user centred design” and sets out to define a website as a “user experience”. It does a masterful job of collating and analysing all of the parameters that a web designers and others must consider when building a site and designing a user interface. The book expands upon Garrett's own theory model, which divides the user experience into five layers or “planes”, namely Surface, Skeleton, Structure, Scope and Strategy. Each plane is dealt with in detail and the book touches upon many areas such as page layout, information architecture and the use of contrast and uniformity to name but a few.

The Elements of User Experience propounds an excellent method for web design and is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 1

Simple Websites: Organizing content rich web sites into simple structures
by Stefan Mumaw

This is a gem of a book. Stefan Mumaw has taken 24 websites and in each case, describes how they were designed. The book is illustrated not only with images of the finished websites but also with the original designers sketches, describing how site structures and page layouts came to be.

The chosen websites all have something in common - they are simple; that is to say, they all look simple. Each one has a very clean and clear interface but in many cases, the content is rich and complex. Here is the crux of the book. How do good web designers turn complex content into simple, easy to use websites that look great? Read the book.

In addition to helping you get inside the head of the designer, this book is a great source for design inspiration. In most cases, the chosen example sites are beautifully laid out, make great use of colour, typography and image, and use intuitive navigation.

Simple Websites: Organizing content rich web sites into simple structures is currently out of print but second-hand copies are available from Amazon.co.uk

Avery Hill Library copies: 1

Weaving the Web: Origins and Future of the World Wide Web
by Tim Berners-Lee

The first thing to say about this book is that it is essential reading for every student on the Website Architecture programme. The second thing to say is that it is not the most readable of books. The content, however, more than justifies the effort.

Essentially, the book gives a first-hand account of the development of the web. The first half (or so) focuses on the work done while Tim Berners-Lee was at CERN and developments shortly after that, including the setting up of the W3C. This is essentially an interesting history lesson and it constantly amazed me how recent were the events he describes. The latter part of the book covers Berners-Lee's thoughts on the current state of the web (this book was published in 2000 and is already showing its age) and his hopes for the future. A lot of this latter part is very interesting and looks at the impact of the web on society and politics; it also postulates what he refers to as the "semantic web". If he is right, the future of the web could be amazing.

Weaving the Web is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Avery Hill Library copies: 1