In order to develop useful titles, you need to employ logical sense and

follow a few information design guidelines.

The title should be at most 64 characters in length. Take into consideration

that there is no rule for the acceptable title length, and that most browsers

truncate the title. Using a short title will help the user to read and

understand the title’s meaning.

Establish a Title Structure

You should establish a structure to define titles and use it consistently.

Following are three examples for structure definition:

Home Page: A company’s Website home page should include the company

name. In addition, you could include a brief description of what the site is

about.

Example:

* webmastergroup

2. Product Category Documents: When titling a product category

document you should include the category name followed by the company

name. Each word of the product’s name should start with an upper case

letter.

Example:

* webmastergroup - seo blogs

webmastergroup - seo blogs

What to Avoid

The guidelines described above do not guarantee that no errors will occur.

Following is a list of things you should avoid including in your titles:

1. Special characters: Special characters affect the key word search

process. In addition, assistant technology for visually impaired users will

read the title’s content literally. If a document contains the title: –::PC and

Electronics::– the user agent will read “dash dash colon colon PC and

Electronics colon colon dash dash.” This would not be meaningful to the

user.

2. Using the same name for all the documents: Every time a user creates a

bookmark, the browser will use the title as the bookmark’s name. If you

use the same title for all your Web documents, it will be difficult for the

user to identify the specific bookmark he wants to use. Also, search

engines will display the same link text multiple times, for different pages

o your site, causing more confusion to the user. Remember that using

frames as a design mechanism limits the browser to the frame group

document’s title. The browser will not use individual documents’ titles.

3. Using the “untitled document” title: I don’t think people knowingly use

this title, given the huge number of online documents that use it. Just

make a search using your favorite search engine for the key word

“untitled document”, and you’ll be stunned by the amount of documents

returned. “Untitled document” is the default title used by many tools used

to create hypertext documents. You should change the default title before

publishing the document. This is a good example of the common minimal

importance given to the document title.

How to Test Your Title

You should test documents’ titles to determine their efficiency. Following

is a simple but effective method to test whether the titles meet their

purpose:

1. Create a bookmark for each hypertext document. The browser will

allow modification of the bookmark’s name. The browser will display the
title of the document in context as the default name for the bookmark. If

you need to change the name at the time of creating the bookmark, it

means the title was not properly defined. Review the title until it clearly

describes the document’s content.

2. Have a group of users access the bookmark you created in the previous

step. Before they actually access the bookmark, have them read the

shortcut name and tell you what kind of information they expect to find

once they access the shortcut. Pay close attention and write down what

users tell you.

3. Once users access the document, ask them if the information matches

what they expected. Take note of the users’ observations.

4. Review the results and annotations. If the results show that the

information accessed didn’t match what the user expected, you need to

redefine the titles and repeat the test until you obtain favorable results.

This iterative process will help you understand the users’ thought

processes at the time of accessing a Website. Possibly what you think will

be a descriptive title would not seem so descriptive to the user. By testing

titles with real users, you would have begun to design using a different

approach, known as User Centric Design.

Conclusion

Even though the browser does not display the title as part of the content, it

is widely used in the visual interface.

The title is a unique identifier; therefore, great care should be taken in

defining it. What would your impression be if you opened a book to its

table of contents and find that all the chapters were named identically,

though the references were to different pages? How would you be able to

select the chapter you are looking for if they all have the same title?

Using ambiguous or redundant titles will lead to confusion on the part of

the user, and make it more difficult for them to access the resources

available on the Website. Take advantage of the advice provided here to

ensure your site’s users know how to get to the information they want at