Perhaps I shouldn’t be bewildered by the fact that the professional design knowledge that was accumulated over many years in the publishing of newspapers and magazines rarely shows up in the design of web sites. There are many reasons for this, but the primary one is the simple fact that none of the people who had the skills to build web sites in the early years were from the publishing industry. Indeed people with publishing skills often sneered at web professionals, with the same sneer that the makers of carts and buggies sneered at the early automobile manufacturers.

Anyway, let’s cut to the chase. Here are 10 principles for you:

1. The rules of magazine publishing apply. Web sites that are built with the intention that they be read regularly are electronic magazines – no more, no less. Therefore all the rules of the magazine publishing business apply in some way. This is true of blogs that are web sites. Blogs are just a species of electronic magazine. A blog is almost a false concept. Bloggers are sometimes columnists (like the op-ed writers in the New York Times) and sometimes reporters (like Drudge in the political world) and sometimes magazine publishers (like Engadget). The web is a natural syndication medium or perhaps a super-syndication medium, so it is possible to be mix these things. (What I mean by this, is that the linking structure of the web naturally syndicates everything you write, so long as other sites out there link to you and search engines find you.). Make no mistake though, what is true in magazine publishing is true for electronic magazines, but sometimes in a slightly different way.

2. Focus, focus, focus. Like a magazine, an electronic magazine/web site should have focus. It could be like a newspaper, which covers many things (international news, national news, local news, the arts, gossip, etc.) – but bases itself entirely on what’s happening now. However, to try to do that is to enter into tough competition with thousands of other popular web sites, many of which are linked to national newspapers or television channels. It is far better to focus on a particular subject area. (If you’re a regular reader of this site and you object with “but your focus is poor” then I have to confess that I have a larger plan. I’m trying to establish multiple web sites here – this is just the stalking horse. This site is here to establish others which will have specific focus.)

3. Layout counts and counts big. Nevertheless if you visit some popular web sites, you’ll be astounded at how bad the layout is. Drudge is a wonderful example. The layout sucks mightily. You can succeed with lousy layout if your content is compelling. We live in a world where form usually beats content hands down, so maybe it should be obvious that layout counts, but the truth is that few web designers have the requisite skill to do professional layout. (how many, for example, know anything about how to match colors or where to place illustrations?) There is also the problem that good design efforts are sometimes sabotaged by manic adverts and the browser world currently makes it difficult to satisfy all browsers all the time.

4. Brand the web site in the traditional publishers way. Related to the last point, let us not forget how newspapers and magazines are branded. It is not just by virtue of the name and logo, it is also done by type face, style and page design. Most web site builders do not think of branding in those terms, but they should – because that’s what branding of magazines is. It is true that we are still limited to some degree by web-friendly fonts, but there are no other limits. The important point here is that layout and design brands a web site. Originally, as an experiment, I chose to vary the colors and logo on this web site on a regular basis, but not change the basic layout. As an idea, it works (I’m told) although few web sites are likely to imitate this and such an idea is only valid for a electronic magazine site.

5. Adverts need to be designed in. Advertising areas need to be included as part of the design and they need to be deliberately placed to effect, if you want to garner advertising money. And by the way, Google proved a long long time ago that busy distracting adverts do not please the reader. That’s exactly why Google won the search engine wars. Relevant adverts do please the reader. Well placed adverts get clicks. It’s a fact. (In the magazine world they say that “when the copy is read, the adverts get read.”) But if you give over a page to too much advertising space or blow the minds of the readership with Flash animation, the reader will not like it.

6. Web sites need to be sticky. They need to be much stickier than magazines need to be. Most visitors to a web site can be compared to people in a magazine shop, who browse through a magazine but do not buy it. The only readers a web site really has are those who return. (While this site averages 500 readers per day at the moment, only about 200 are returnees.) Web sites thus need to engage their customers so that they return. This means RSS feeds, registration and an email service. If you’re asking yourself whether this particular web site is properly geared up in that way, the answer is “no”, but this particular web site is still under construction – as you will know if you’re a regular reader here. (OK – I know – it’s a year old and still under construction, but bear in mind that I also have to earn a crust, and the Google Ads currently net less than $50 per month)

7. It’s the headlines, stupid. The rule is this; the headline sells the article. In reader behavior, the headline sells the first paragraph and the first paragraph sells the article (or news story). This is even more true on the web than it is magazines. If someone searches on a word and you get onto their search results (a trick in itself) then they have to pick your headline over the competing ones. So you have to know how to write attractive headlines – and also you need to know what are the topics that attract attention too. (By the way a headline with the word “sex” in it always draws traffic). And, when they read the content, they also read the adverts if the design is good and the adverts are relevant. The main reason that web advertising is so off-putting is that it isn’t relevant to the content. Google has this right, but Google’s matching of adverts to content is only approximate.

8. Use multiple layouts. Here’s something. magazines do that web sites rarely do. Magazines design multiple types of page layouts. Web sites can do this too, but mostly they have a home page, a standard page and a registration page plus a few other layouts for pages that are rarely visited such as the “about us” page. It needn’t be like that and it shouldn’t be like that. Using multiple layouts is often difficult because of the way that web site software engines work. Some offer thin support for multiple layouts.

9. One dimensional content is limiting. Let’s get the idea of focus right. You want to focus on a given topic – let’s say it’s Photoshop – so you really do have to provide insightful information on Photoshop. Ideally your content will be better than anyone else’s for the Photoshop audience you have chosen (and by the way their are many subsets of a Photoshop audience from first time users through to professional photographers.) However, in the spirit of a magazine, you need to vary the content to cover related interests, so that the reader has a good reason to hang around the site and read other things. They come because you teach them how to use Photoshop better than anyone else and they hang around sometimes because you also entertain them.

10. Rich navigation wins. The reader cannot read the content they cannot find. Even assuming that you are such a gifted writer that a reader will want to read everthing you’ve written, the odds are they will never find it on your site. The cure for this is what I call “rich navigation.” You’ll see what I mean by this as I expand the navigation on this site over the next 3 months or so. Right now this site has average navigation. Rich navigation means making it possible for the reader to find all the pages on your site in many different ways and to enjoy surfing the site in the process.