Webpage Layout and User Friendliness

Users traverse a page on a web site in only a few basic ways. It is easy to follow the flow of what we, as designers, envision for a page, instead of really focusing on our audience and the true functionality. Functionality goes beyond aesthetics. This includes screen resolution, browser capabilities, and designing for alternate client environments. As far as layout is concerned, for a usual informative site such as a periodical, it is usually a paper-based reading pattern. The paper based reading pattern follows a left to right, then down, and left to right zig zag. A secondary pattern is screen-based, which is more landscape oriented: How you would view something on a television. This is a circular pattern, beginning center top proceeding to follow a clockwise motion back around. This must be considered when designing content for location placement.