8.1 Creating Content

1.	At this stage, the web developer should have a clear idea on the purpose of the site, nature of its content, the site architecture and individual web pages and their required content.
2.	Page content can now be created or gathered.
3.	Such content could be text, graphics, video or audio.
4.	Web users usually don’t read text word by word, rather they scan web pages.

	a)	Web page content must be designed to suit this reading style.
	b)	Short words, sentences and paragraphs should be used.
	c)	A paragraph should explain one idea only.
	d)	A summary of the page content should be presented at the start of the page.
	e)	Headings and subheadings must be accurately chosen to be meaningful and consistent with content.
	f)	Organizing text in bulleted lists and highlighting important text can also improve the text readability.
	g)	Commonly installed fonts which are easy to read should be used.
	h)	A limited number of fonts should be used consistently throughout the site.

8.1 Creating Content

5.	Web page background and text colours must be chosen carefully.

	a)	Busy backgrounds should not be used as they make content difficult to read and distract the user’s attention.
	b)	The page background should be consistent in all pages of the site.
	c)	Colours should be chosen to suit the content presented and the user’s mood required.
	d)	E.g., bright colours (e.g. yellow) have a cheerful effect while blue have a relaxing effect.

6.	Graphics should be used to balance the text content on the web page.

	a)	However, if not used carefully, graphics can increase the download time of the web page undermining the quality of service users with slow connections get.
	b)	Thus, graphics size must be reduced as much as possible.
	c)	Choosing the right graphic file format such as JPEG and GIF is critical.
	d)	Other graphics-related guidelines include:
	e)	Providing the dimensions of images for the browser to use in the rendering of the page before loading it (IMG SRC tags).
	f)	Providing a text description of each image so that users do not have to wait for it to be loaded (ALT tag).