by 15 people |
General lens (non-commerce) guidelines
This lens is about suggested design guidelines for creating a Squidoo lens. A lens is basically a web page. Any good web design guidelines will apply to a lens. In addition, the lens has some limitations and structure that makes the design of a good lens more challenging. In my experience creating lens and seeing other lens, I have come up with some guidelines that will help. I hope you find this useful and let me know if I succeeded by leaving me a blurb below or contact me via the link on the right side of your screen.
Some considerations before you start...
Some basic ideas on lens design.
- CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT - The most important part of any web page is content. You must have good content period. It must be interesting, provide some new information, tell a story or just fun or funny...
- A lens should be focused. A narrow topic that you want to convey. Concise information provided with text, images, and related links.
- Create a "relevant" name for your lens - keep it short but to the point. Rule of thumb - if it is longer than one line on the screen, it is probably too long.
- Have three or four keywords or tags or phrase that will help in searching for your lens.
- Have an organized format starting with a short introduction, a body, and a summary followed by additional links and a guestbook or feedback.
- Keep the lens to a reasonable size. I recommended no more than 3 or 4 screens of information. Any more content should be broken up into a secondary lens with a link to jump there and a return link to jump back. This will also help in speeding up loading of your page.
- Have relevant images, audio or video modules to enhance the experience. Make sure you include captions. Keep your images to a reasonable size - not too large and not too small. Process your images for the best quality - check out my lens on this topic image processing.
A Passion Flower (c) Jack C. Lee 2005.
(apologize for violating my own guideline for including this photo - which happens to be one of my favorite) - Provide relevant links to either support your content or reference other sources. Use inline links to keep the size of your lens to a reasonable size.
- Consider adding a separate module either at the top or bottom of your lens for later additions or new items...once your lens has been published.
- Consider enable your contact email so that readers can contact you with feedback or questions or suggestions. This is in addition to the Guestbook module since you may not be notified when someone adds a blurb to your lens. An email contact is best and it does not limit the text to 300 characters.
Summary
A final word. Don't publish your lens until you have completed your content.
Creating a lens is an artform. These are just recommendations and guidelines. I'm sure you will find plenty of exceptions.
Once you have completed the lens, join related groups, send it to your friends and colleagues.
Listen to comments and feedbacks. Update it on a regular basis and re-publish at least once a week to keep it fresh. Apparently, that affects the ranking.
You want to improve your ranking so that you will get the most publicity.
Creating a lens is an artform. These are just recommendations and guidelines. I'm sure you will find plenty of exceptions.
Once you have completed the lens, join related groups, send it to your friends and colleagues.
Listen to comments and feedbacks. Update it on a regular basis and re-publish at least once a week to keep it fresh. Apparently, that affects the ranking.
You want to improve your ranking so that you will get the most publicity.
Some related links...
Additional information on successful lens making.
- squidbook
- How to create a squidbook.
- web design guidelines from google
- A general web design guideline.
Reader Feedback
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- HealthBug HealthBug Jul 7, 2008 @ 12:21 am
- Good advice.
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- littlespark littlespark May 7, 2008 @ 7:57 am
- Great lens. The facts in this lens are very intriguing and informative. I could learn a lot from this lens and will be useful to design my lens in Squidoo. Thanks for your good effort and for sharing the information. I come across a good informative and interesting site about Web Design on Web Design Please stop by to know more information about Web Design.
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- DrMarkJoyce DrMarkJoyce Mar 31, 2008 @ 4:42 pm
- Jackie -
Very helpful!
Please say more about this:
"Consider adding a separate module either at the top or bottom of your lens for later additions or new items...once your lens has been published."
Does this mean modules can't or shouldn't be added after a lens is published?
Mark
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- CherylK CherylK Feb 5, 2008 @ 3:47 pm
- Excellent advice. I'm trying to power-learn all I can about Squidoo. Thanks for your help. I've published one lens (and will be diligent about updates) and am working on my second. There's a lot of good stuff out there in Squidooland. Wow!
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- Oosquid Oosquid Feb 1, 2008 @ 4:17 pm
- I appreciate your advice on this lens. Great job, 5 stars.
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