Once again, thanks for joining me – Last time in my discussion of Custom Pages, I talked about how important the planning phase is in both Custom Page creation, as well as presentation. Custom pages are a great way to provide a wealth of content targeted around specific areas, including product lines, stages in the sales process, and competitors. The challenge is how do you provide a true launching point for success, not a choke point for informational gridlock!
Page layout can be a big part of your visual and virtual success – but a short explanation of the major objects that help you achieve your goals, or “widgets,” is definitely in order. We’ll be diving more into what makes each widget special in later blogs, but at least for now, just knowing of their existence is a good first step. But what exactly is a widget, Stu?
Good question. Glad you asked.
According to Wikipedia, a Widget (or in this case a GUI Widget) is:
In computer programming, a widget (or control) is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a widget is to provide a single interaction point for the direct manipulation of a given kind of data. In other words, widgets are basic visual building blocks which, combined in an application, hold all the data processed by the application and the available interactions on this data. (Wikipedia, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUI_widget.)
With this in mind, layout does become crucial – Having your widgets in a usable and intuitive set-up can increase not only accessibility, but also the frequency that your users reference your corporate information. One of the ways that SAVO introduces a flexible launch pad is by allowing for a layout choice of 5 page styles.
Each of these layouts is suited particularly for different goals – For example, we here at SAVO utilize not only RSS Feeds from the business/corporate world on our custom pages, but also a variety of Tribal information and postings. With this in mind, the ¼ Split Right is the best layout option for us : The various RSS feeds are housed in the right column, with particularly HTML image headers and sorted documents in the left column – In this setup, the eye naturally flows from left to right, and feels especially intuitive to our users. Some of our larger clients utilize many different information streams, and feel that the 3 column set up is perfect for their needs. Still others use the Full Page as a general lander – A simple page that leads to more complex layouts as you delve deeper into their links.
So as you can see, Custom Pages are a bit more complex than just throwing up some HTML code and letting the ‘Bulls run’, so to speak. With a bit of forethought, you can make your page both elegant AND useful – having both Beauty AND function. And that is always a good thing.
All things being equal: Custom is king.
NEXT TIME: The HTML Widget…Your Father’s Widget no longer!
