Meeting the needs of users: toward a semiotics of the Web

The tremendous growth of the Internet has brought a heightened awareness of the importance of designing information to meet customers' needs. Although we may never develop universal design standards that apply to every situation, we need more empirically-supported guidelines to inform design decisions. Guidelines must be based on a commonly shared semiology of World Wide Web conventions. A semiotics of the Web can help us determine how meaning is derived from Web pages and the Web, and in turn how to better design sites to convey intended and desired meanings. This article identifies six categories or dimensions of design issues relating to the Web that serves as a beginning of a Web semiotics. Each dimension is explained, with various research issues and questions suggested.