Is Your Right Column Too Long?
While related links, listboxes and widgets can be powerful tools for presenting your content, the right-hand column of your page should never be longer than the center area.
Wrangling your right column may require some tough decisions.
There will come a time when you’d like to highlight (or you’re pressured to highlight) the office’s next 5 events, the 7 most recent announcements and that program for which you just built a spiffy new widget. It simply can’t all fit. Stop us if you’ve heard this one: if you highlight everything, you highlight nothing.
Try these techniques for shortening your right-hand column:
- shorten a listbox by limiting them to display 3, 2 or even 1 item at a time
- shorten or eliminate the summaries for your Events and Announcements
- find other high-traffic pages within your site to sprinkle widgets
- rotate your right-column features based on the seasonal traffic to the site
For more formatting tips, visit the Writing & Style Guide. There you’ll find best practices to help you create content to draw visitors in and showcase your department’s best attributes.