This document provides guidance on key elements to consider when designing a website using Google Sites, including purpose, content, navigation, and visual design. It emphasizes organizing relevant content and easy navigation to help users find information. It also recommends designing for skimming with short pages, minimal scrolling, and reducing image file sizes for quick loading.

1. Web Design with Google Sites

2. Key Elements of Site Development Purpose what will you use the site for? classroom mangement student ePortfolios collaborative project Content relevant & organized (be selective) Navigation user friendly Visual Design branding, or look and feel

3. Content Information Architecture Organize pages and links

4. Navigation help users find their way Navigation Menus side navigation breadcrumb navigation on bottom links within your pages http://www.finegardening.com/design/articles/designing-a-lawnless-front-yard.aspx

5. Visual Design a different kind of web... a few key elements of good web design... use fonts, images and links to direct users people generally skim websites, they don't read it minimize scrolling, keep pages short use links to more pages provide more content keep images small reduce image resolution for the web, people get annoyed if an images takes to long to load See instructions for reducing images for the web click here for instructions

6. Start Designing Google's Sites: https://www.google.com/support/sites/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=23216 Example School Sites: http://www.joycepto.org/ http://sites.google.com/site/googlitics/ http://sites.google.com/site/thephotoweb/ Resources: http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesignbasics/u/webdesignbasics.htm#s5 http://www.siteshelp.com/