ArtSnob

Image via Wikipedia

Society is full of information, things we have to digest and fully take in.  Information overload is unfortunately a quite problematic side effect,  especially for webmasters.  Managing wide varieties of information, while still having an intuitive design can pose a large problem. You want your high traffic areas easy to get to, while still showcasing some low-traffic but relevant information. Keeping in mind, that average Internet users won’t be digesting massive amounts of text, you want to aim for the cleanest possible landing pages you can.Although, this is not limited to only your landing page, but your entire website itself.  Doing this, while keeping the theme minimal can pose problem, there are however, solutions.  There are many examples out there of both good and bad design, but one of my favorite examples of good and intuitive designs would be wordpress.com.  The Word Press landing page does an amazing job at being so packed with information, yet has a very easy to use interface. Another is the web 2.0 wonder, Twitter  which, even with all the users of the web site still has the very (perhaps even overly) simplistic design. You don’t have to just use their examples but, the following may be helpful: Digest:Depending on how much information you are working with, one solution could be a ‘layered’ content guide. First, get a handle on how much information you are working with.Revise: Separate your content into sections (try to keep the main amount of each type as minimal as possible).  At the end of an article, post links to relevant and similar articles underneath, this will also keep visitors to your website there longer.  Repeat: In each section, you can create further breakdowns, having their own menu system.       Perhaps you are already using a CMS (Content Management System), in this case (also, depending on which one you are using) you may be able to  find a plug-in to automate this task.  If you are hand-coding you may also be able to automate a portion, depending on both the code and program you are using.   

Related articles:

• Exchanging Blog Traffic with Related Posts (johnchow.com)
• Howto: add news section to Wordpress Content Site (squio.nl)