Standards and Guidelines
To provide a quality experience to our users it is essential that we are consistent in both design and content of our websites. Consistency is the biggest factor that separates a negative experience from a positive one.
The following are basic guidelines and standards to familiarize yourself when working on your website.
Quick Tips
- Think about what you put on your page, keep your audience in mind and be clear and concise in your messaging.
- All pages on the website should have a consistent look to maintain a consistent brand.
- The content on your site should be consistent in tone, mood, quality, and quantity.
- If it鈥檚 not ready, don鈥檛 include it or don鈥檛 publish it. Don鈥檛 use 鈥淐oming soon鈥︹, 鈥淯nder Construction鈥, or any other similar wording.
- Do not include "News" section if you are not going to be updating on a regular basis.
Text Standards
What to do:
- Use digital brand fonts. All main body text should be Helvetica Neue. All headings should be Proxima Nova. Refer to the for . For the most part these are standard, but in some cases if you copy and paste you may need to clear formatting to set to default text styles.
- Make sure to proofread all text and perform spell check.
- Be clear, concise and simple in your copy. Get to the point.
- Make sure the most important information takes precedence.
- Put yourself in the shoes of someone coming to your page for the first time 鈥 get to know your audiences.
- Speak to your audience, don鈥檛 dumb down your content, but make it as simple and easy to digest as possible.
What not to do:
- Don鈥檛 change the font face.
- Don鈥檛 change the font color.
- Don鈥檛 change the font size outside of the predefined size options.
- Don鈥檛 add background colors to your text.
- Don鈥檛 bold, underline or italicize all your text 鈥 if it鈥檚 all bold, italicized or underlined, none of it will stand out.
- Don鈥檛 add additional space between characters.
- Don鈥檛 use excessive exclamation points or all caps 鈥 your audience will think you鈥檙e yelling at them.
- Do not delete or rename the index file.
An index file must be present in each directory, adhering to established conventions and best practices! It is a default landing page for that specific directory, and its presence ensures proper functioning, accessibility, and content visibility of your website.