BASIC ISSUES FOR COUNSELING CENTER WEB DESIGN   Written by David L. Gilles-Thomas, Ph.D. Homepage: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~dgthomas Counseling Services, State University of New York at Buffalo Send email
Return to the Counseling Center Village	Updated November 2010

This document will take you through various issues that should be considered as you set about designing your own web page. You can use the table of contents at the left to go directly to the topic of interest to you, or read the entire document from beginning to end.

 

WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE

One of the first things you need to consider is who your intended audience is. If this is not clear to you as you begin to design your web page, you will probably find yourself eventually confronting a number of different problems: your page will lack a coherent structure, you will be unable to make clear decisions about what to include and what not to include, and it will become difficult to effectively publicize your site.

Here are several different potential audiences for your web page. You may decide to target just a single audience from this list, or a combination of two or more, or perhaps devise your own unique target population not specifically listed here.

• Students
  • at your school
  • at other schools
     
• Faculty/Staff
  • at your school
  • at other schools
     
• General public
  • United States only
  • English speaking only
  • International

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CONTENTS

Do you know what you want to include, and what you don't want to include on your web site? To answer this question, it is useful to consider the following issues:

• What is the purpose of your web site?
  Do you have a "mission statement" for what you plan to do? Is your web site going to be primarily informational; will you be providing self-help materials; is the emphasis on prevention, training, consultation, publicity, or a combination of these or other issues?
   
• Have you looked at other counseling center sites to see what they are doing?
  There is an on-line Directory of counseling center web pages from which you can explore the work of your colleagues around the world. What do you like about these other schools' web pages? What doesn't work? What is missing? What do you want to do differently? Are there things you want to do similarly?
   
• Do you want users to return to your site?
  This will have direct implications for the kind of information you have at your site, how you will keep it up to date, and the way the material is organized. If your site is just a static listing of your services, then people probably won't be returning on a regular basis. If, on the other hand, you provide on-line self-help material, you are probably wanting users to return when they are looking for information about a personal concern.
   

• There are very few limits to what you can put on your web page. Here are a few possibilities of what you can include:
   
  • Information about your Center (location, maps, hours, how to make an appointment, services offered, etc).
  • Staff listings (names, degrees, interests, how to contact, pictures, etc).
  • Calendar of events (e.g., workshops, groups).
  • Self-help brochures, handouts, and other materials.
  • Recommended reading lists.
  • Referral information (local, regional, national, international).
  • Information about internships, practica, and other training opportunities (e.g., general information, on-line applications).
  • On-line advice (e.g., users could send requests for support, and a staff member could respond directly via email).
  • Software (programs people could download for their own use).
  • Links to other internet resources.
     
• Have you considered the risks of what you are putting on-line?
  John W. Hall, formerly a staff counselor at the University of Houston-Clear Lake Counseling Services office (now in private practice) drafted a useful document several years ago outlining some of the risks that must be considered when creating a website for your office.  You can access that document here:

  "Risks Associated with
  Counseling Center Web Sites"

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INSULAR or INTERCONNECTED

One of the key questions that needs to be answered is: Will your web site link to other sites?

• Insular: There are clear benefits to writing all of your own on-line material yourself.
  • You will have complete control over the content of your web page.
  • You do not have to depend on other web sites to have accurate or up-to-date material.
  • You can prevent a common problem for sites that do link to other people's web pages: expired/no longer existing web pages.
     
• Interconnected: The World Wide Web is designed to facilitate the interconnection of information. To fully capitalize on the possibilities inherent in the Web you will want to link your site to other sites. What this means for you is that you do not have to write everything yourself and can still have a very powerful web page very quickly. For example, you could link to:
  • The Virtual Pamphlet Collection, which contains a listing of on-line counseling center self-help brochures.
  • Specific self-help brochures at other schools, to supplement and round-out your own offerings.
  • Self-help software archives.
  • Information for referrals in different parts of the country.

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LAYOUT

Now that you know what your site will contain, you must decide what your site will look like. Here are some things to consider:

1. Don't forget that this is hypertext.
   The world wide web is made up of hypertext documents, or at least that is what it is designed for. Hypertext is a type of reading material (the "text" part) that contains words and other symbols or pictures embedded in the text that will link you (the "hyper" part) to other sections of that text or to entirely different documents. Many people put documents (e.g., a self-help brochure) on-line, simply transferring a printed version to the web as is, with no embedded links. For many purposes, this works fine, especially for smaller documents. Unfortunately, this ignores the fact that most people do not use the web the same way they use a book or other printed source. Very few readers of a web page stick around and read screen after screen of information. Instead, they read a piece here, click on a link to another portion of the document, then click on a link to another web site... clicking their way along from page to page, in a fairly nonlinear manner. Of course, creating a link-filled web page takes a lot more time to set up than simply putting a plain document on-line.
    
2. This is the MTV generation.
   Students expect information to be slick, eye-catching, and colorful. Whether we like it or not, no matter how good the content of your web page might be, it is not going to be as effective if the packaging is unattractive. There are numerous ways to make your web site attractive (e.g., graphics, different fonts, colors, eye-catching layout, intuitive organization).
    
3. Using Graphics: A Word of Caution.
   The World Wide Web allows you to add wonderful pictures, logos, and other graphic images to your web page. Your page can end up looking really quite spectacular. The problem is, graphics can slow down the time your web page takes to load at the user's machine. If the user at the other end has a slow connection, or if internet traffic is busy at that particular time (or a host of other conditions), it may take a very long time for your web page to appear on the user's computer screen, even if you have just a few pictures on your web page. This can be very frustrating for people trying to access your web site. Remember, not everyone has a fast ethernet connection like the one you have in your office.
    
4. Color.
   There are lots of different ways to include color in your web page, most notably the background of your page, and the color of your text (different colors for different fonts). This is a simple way to spruce up the look of your page with very little effort.
    

   Note: Colors are defined in your HTML document using RGB color codes. Here's how it works: "The six-digit number and letter combinations represent colors by giving their RGB (red, green, blue) value. The six digits are actually three two-digit numbers in sequence, representing the amount of red, green, or blue as a hexadecimal value in the range 00-FF. For example, 000000 is black (no color at all), FF0000 is bright red, and FFFFFF is white (fully saturated with all three colors). These number and letter combinations are cryptic. These number and letter combinations are cryptic. Fortunately an online resource is available to help you track down the combinations that map to specific colors." (from A Beginner's Guide to HTML). (If your browser does not support JavaScript, we also have a simple online chart to help you locate the proper codes for specific colors.)

    

5. Navigation.
   Do you have ways of assisting your users' navigation of your web site? For example, you may want to include buttons they can click on to do things like:
    
   • Return to the main page.
   • Return to the top of the current page.
   • Go to the next page.
   • Go back to the previous page.
   • Send email to the person in charge of the web page.
   • Search your web site for a word or phrase.
      
6. Text Browsers.
   Not all users have a graphics browser. Instead, they use a browser program that displays only text -- no graphics at all. Have you taken this into account in the design of your page? Does your page make sense visually to a text-only browser?
    
7. Accessibility.
   A frequently overlooked issue is the accessibility of a web site. For example, do you make provisions for visually impaired users? Quoting from the Public Service Commission of Canada's web page: "What about people with blindness who use alternate Web browsers or who use speech output screen reading devices? What about persons who use alternative keyboard systems which have limited mouse use. In that case, accessibility depends on the Web page design itself. Some pages are accessible because they observe a few simple design principles. Unfortunately, many Web documents can present a definite obstacle to users with disabilities."

   Here are some web sites that provide more information about accessibility issues:

   • Designing an Accessible World: Accessible Web Site Guidelines
   • About.com: Accessibility and the Web

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AUTHORING STRATEGIES

How will you actually create your web page? There are various methods, the major ones being:

1. By Hand.
   You can write your HTML code by hand. You can learn how to do this using various methods:
   • Buy a book on writing HTML. HTML for Dummies Quick Reference by IDG Books, is an inexpensive and well written introduction to web page designing.
   • Borrow other people's ideas. You can view the "source" of any web page you are looking at (usually by pulling down the "View" menu in you browser, and selecting "Document Source.") This way, when you see something on a web page you would like to use for your page, you can see how that author did it.
   • Link to one of the many on-line web tutorials.
      
2. Hire someone else.
   There are many students looking to make some extra money, and pad their resumes, who can often do very creative work for you. Or, there are more and more private businesses that specialize in web page designing. Or, you may even have someone on campus who specializes in assisting campus offices in the design of web pages.
    
3. Software.
   There are many software programs on the market these days, or available as shareware right on the internet, that will help automate the creation of a web page for you. You still control the design of your page, but do not have to get bogged down in the arcane html programming language.

   To find out more about html editors, here are several web sites that provide reviews:
    

   • cws.internet.com: Review of Web Page Editors.
   • About.com: HTML Editors - Help, Info & Reviews .
   • Yahoo.com: HTML Editor links

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TECH SUPPORT

The good news is, you do not need to know everything there is to know about web design. You just need to know someone who does. You will want to locate someone at your school who will be able to answer your questions. A good place to begin is at your school's computing center or other office that supports the school's technology efforts. Begin developing a relationship with this person early-on in the development of your web site; indeed, it is a good idea to begin this relationship even before you begin designing your page. You will have questions, if not now, then in the future. Trust me. 

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TESTING YOUR SITE

1. General
   Once you have something up and running, you will want to test what you have created. There are several things to explicitly test:
    
   • Do all your links work? A simple typo in a web link is an extremely common and terribly irritating problem.  Click on ALL of your links to make sure they work!
   • Is the formatting the way you want it?
   • Are your graphics properly aligned?
   • Do you have any errors in your html codes?
     There are web sites that you can go to that will automatically test your web site for any errors in your html coding. Here are several such sites:
     
     -NetMechanic
     -Web Design Group HTML Validator
      
   • Are there any spelling errors?
   
   
2. Browser Compatibility
   In addition to these basic issues, you will also want to test your site on as many different browsers as possible. Remember, you have designed your site using whatever browser you use... but there are a lot of other browsers out there, and no one web page looks exactly the same on any of these browsers. Find someone who has a different browser, and call up your web page using this alternative browser. Does everything still look alright? (It will not look exactly the same, but does it look acceptable?).
   
   Some of the major browsers you will want to test your page with include:
    
   • Apple Safari
   • Google Chrome
   • Microsoft Internet Explorer
   • Firefox
   • Opera
   • Mobile browsers for cell phones, PDAs, and other small devices.
   • Lynx - this is a text-based browser... don't forget to test your page via a text-only browser! If you don't have access to Lynx, you can still check your page by going to Lynx Viewer which will let you see what your pages will look like.
   
   
3. Usage Statistics
   Another concern is whether people are using your site at all! Most schools will keep statistics on web page access -- how often a page is accessed, from where, with what type of browser, etc. You can check with your Computing Center (or equivalent office) to find out if they keep such statistics and how you can access them.

   Alternatively, you could install a counter directly on to your web page. If you have been surfing the web at all, you have probably already seen these counters, with some statement such as "This web site has been accessed XXXX times." Again, check with your Computing Center for how to set up an individual counter for your page(s).

   CAVEAT: It is, in fact, unclear whether such stats tell you anything meaningful at all, however they might be generated. There are various reasons for this, rather technical, but you should learn about these limitations if you intend to look at such statistics. I recommend an interesting web page originally from Cranfield University in the United Kingdom that presents an argument that web page access stats are, in fact, entirely meaningless and should not be used at all.

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