Must have for your website
What does your website MUST have? Your website must be as plain as possible to keep your visitors happy, but still there are elements that must be on your pages.
Page design
These are the visual must have elements on the website:
Header
Which never changes throughout the website and sais where you are, possibly what this site is about and can have global functions for the whole site, e.g. language select button or search input http://www.miha.in/cms/modules/textWYSIWYG/fckeditor/editor/images/spacer.giffield.
Site navigation
Of course, every site must have a navigaion mean, which is the site main menu. The site main menu is a major element which is used the most of the other elements. It must be well noticeable and in a noticeable place, but should be plain. It must be easy to use and the best if there is only one site navigation, so your site users are not confused what and how to use.
The site menu reflects your site structure. Your site has better usability if it have plain and easily rememberable structure, no matter how large or huge your website is. Quantity of points in the first level of site main menu should not exceed 7, but not less than 3.
The place and look of the site navigation must not change throughout the website.
Main block
Main content block is what the site is made for. This is content block of every page. It must be the biggest element of every page design. If there is too little text in the content block, increase it manually.
Footer
Footer must go after content block and can contain anything you want. The footer is a global site element and must not change throughout the site. For user, the footer is a signal that the page he or she is looking at is over. The footer must be plain, easily recognized and distinguished from the main content block.
Usually, footer contains complete site map for better search engine optimisation (SEO), disclaimer and copyright info, contact information.
The main function of the footer is to tell a user that what you wanted to say is finished, so the user can relax and stop reading. That is why you are not limited in your desires to put any information into the footer - the user will read it when it will be possible and easy.
Sitemap
Social networks operations
This makes your website integrated into the modern social oriented web. A user might want to comment your page, or save it to his bookmarks, or publish the link to it on his favourite social network.
Site construction
Human-readable address
Title tag
Title <h1> on pages
Traffic analyzer
RSS