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A Good Webpage Design Isn't Easy By Kevin Wolf      Can a home page be designed wrong? Let me count the ways.      Go to your favorite site and ask yourself some questions about the host agency or the issue that is the focus of the site. Let's use an anonymous water agency as an example. Ask yourself, what is their Cryptosporidium policy? What was their historical water use and their most recent demand projections? Do they have any job openings and how might I apply? What are their water education programs? You get the idea of the types of questions you might ask.      Upon opening their homepage, can you figure out the path to the answers to these questions in a logical manner? There is a major agency that has published an important report on the web but you will be hard pressed to figure out how to find it from searching their homepage. Their page is graphically great but it is not well designed for finding information.      There is the "query search" solution to poor design which unfortunately is not used by enough agencies with an unintuitive website. The query solution requires that the host organization invest in a Wide Area Information Server. In "vanilla" WAIS, you type in a word and the search mechanism pulls up and hyperlinks every reference to that word in the website. With a search query that uses Bernulian logic, you could type in two or three words (Yahoo is an example of this) and significantly lower the number of references you will pull up on your search and increase your chance of finding what you are really looking for.      Even with a great query function, websites directories and pages should be designed to be logical and intuitive. And it is best if they have less than ten hyperlinks from the home page. Better is five to seven nested main pages which then tree off into all possible areas which the agency will eventually want to provide information in. If one puts too many links on the home page, there are too many duplicative choices whereby a visitor could think their question could follow a variety of different paths off the homepage. In this case less can be better than more.      You probably thought by the opening sentence in this column that I would write about the problems of large GIF files on the homepage causing delays that turn off visitors, or the problems lack of upkeep is causing to the Web. Yes, there are plenty of bad designs in this area too, but I am a strong believer in functionality winning over looks as the most important thing to judge in almost anything but a graphical design or beauty contest.      I've looked over my past columns and realize that I am beginning to repeat myself. Plan, strategize, think and plan some more. Develop a mock homepage and than run your strategic plan past this design. Brainstorm and prioritize your goals and your objective for the different goals. Know clearly what you are trying to accomplish. And then spend time critically thinking though your directory design.      Think two to five years out. Imagine putting on-line all components of every board package once a month for the next five years. Where will all the information rest? You've answered wrong if you said "in chronological order by Board meeting." Each board item should be linked under its ultimate resting place within the overall directory. So if you are giving the board a staff report on the storm water runoff program or the waste water reclamation project, you would link that file under this subject in the web page and then write hyperlinks from the "upcoming Board package" page to each of the "real" resting places.      In time, excellent examples of agency and contractor website design will be agreed upon and others will copy them. Individuality will be expressed in graphics and not so much in primary webpage layout. There will be benefits in this standardization including the ease by which users can find information and collaborate in efficiently linking informational resources. Send me your examples of good design, and if I agree with you, I will publish their address in the next issue of US Water News. Internet Planning, Training and Web Development Kevin Wolf and Associates has helped some of the largest (and smallest) water agencies and consulting firms in all areas of the Internet. WWW page planning, hosting, and maintenance, strategic planning, training and more. Kevin Wolf & Associates 724 N Street, Davis, CA 95616 Phone (530) 758-4211      Fax (530) 758-2338 kjwolf@dcn.davis.ca.us     http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/kjwolf/