VIII. Presentation
57. The presentation of a website includes the site design, the use of different content formats and the assurance of site visibility. The appropriate use of technologies also plays a critical role in the presentation of web pages. Consistent website design through branding and navigation and site visibility should be ensured. Specific notes in producing and developing homepages are provided in section IX.
(A) Common Look and Feel for Government Websites
58. In order to project the online brand image of the HKSARG, to improve the navigability and usability of Government websites and to provide a consistent and user-friendly experience to web users, the Government announced in March 2003 the adoption of Common Look and Feel (¡§CLF¡¨) for Government websites. For detailed specifications and guidelines on CLF, please see Appendix.
(B) Ensuring Site Visibility to Potential Users
59. A website needs to be visible to potential end users in order to be successful. Given the exponential growth in the number of websites and the diversity of potential users, techniques to ensure site visibility should be employed. Internally, the site should be configured to maximise its exposure in popular search engines. This requires firstly the proper choice of meta data keywords, and secondly, regular registration with the search engines.
1. Using meta data to assist search engines registration
60. The most common method for users to find websites is through popular search engines. These search engines operate on the principle of keyword search where the user enters a keyword and the search engine returns web pages related to the keyword entered. To ensure that the site is returned as one of the top listings in the search results, a descriptive title and meta tags of ¡§descriptions¡¨ and ¡§keywords¡¨ containing the keywords that users commonly search should be defined
61. To ensure the accuracy of the update date of the web page when indexed by search engines, meta tags of ¡§date¡¨ can be added -
<meta name="date" content="TIME_SYNTAX">
where TIME_SYNTAX is <DATE>T<TIME>+<TIMEZONE>
format is CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss+mm:ss
This is especially useful when the web page is dynamically generated by programmes.
2. Regular re-registration in prominent search engines
62. Registration can be conducted manually by visiting the individual search portal sites and submitting an online registration form. Chinese web pages should be submitted to Chinese-based search engines.
63. Each web page should have a descriptive and accurate page title to facilitate work of the search engine (see also para. 88 below).
3. Facilitate search engines indexing
64. Web page hyperlinks generated by Javascripts should be avoided because such hyperlinks normally cannot be indexed by common search engines. As an alternative, webmasters may create a site map with static hyperlinks pointing to all pages in the website, and in the homepage of the site, add a static hyperlink to this site map.
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