Creating a List

On the web, one of the greatest things you can have on your site are lists. Visitors typically scan for lists because they often contain the key elements of what they are looking for. They could be top ten lists, or bullets to offer selling points, or whatever. Big problem with creating a list? Too many people don’t know how.

The owners of this free forum host were nice enough to let me use their site as an example. In this example they use a bullet list to offer some of their selling points. This is a good example of a list. Duh, you say, you already new what a list was. I say many of you don’t. Too often I find lists like this, but the author has not used a bullet list. Instead, they have used a numerical, or alphabetical list. What’s the difference? Numerical or alphabetical lists indicate value, and level of importance for each item. The first items listed typically indicate the most important item. A bullet list indicates no particular level of importance for any one item, and the most important item could theoretically, be hidden in the middle of the list.

Another good idea when creating lists online is to keep them vertically short if you can. If you have many sub-categories to list items, create a separate page to them, and create hyperlinks to them if possible. Let visitors navigate with their mouse, not the scroll bar.