Presenting Content, Not Clutter!

One of the problems with having a lot of content and offering a lot of things would be how to present all of these without looking too cluttered and turning off your customers.

We have previously discussed using hierarchy in your layout and typography and hiding away features that are not going to be used here.  Here are four more techniques that expert webmasters use to design their sites:

Use Tabs.

If you have a lot of sections, or you want to run a headline, you might want to use tabs to display your content one after the other.

With tabs, you can easily organize your content and have a natural flow of information for your users.

Use Slideshows.

Slideshows, or more appropriately showcase sliders, can help you present more content on your Web page. It is a great way to maximize your page’s prime real estate.

Yahoo’s home page is a good example:

You could see that there are actually 36 news items and it scrolls from left to right. Each news story has a headline, a teaser and a short blurb. It also has three related stories presented next to it.

The blue box beneath is a good example of tabs.

Dropdown Boxes.

This is actually an older technique, but is really one of the best ways to give your visitors a more detailed navigation.

Take a look at what the White House did for its website. It first gives you a clean and simple navigation bar.

By choosing one of the options on the navigation bar, you will be presented with a dropdown box that gives you more options related to the main item.

Removable boxes.

Removable boxes are great for content that needs attention, but only for a short time. If you have a registration or login box, or perhaps you let users comment and you have formatting options they can use, consider using removable boxes.

A great example is your mail. For instance, Yahoo! Mail allows you to open a lot of mails and displays them side by side, but once you finish, you can easily close a mail window, freeing up space!