Top Ten Reasons Your Web Site Needs Help

[blitzen]

For print media there are standards (styles), the Chicago Manual of Style. What is for the Web?

The Chicago Manual of Style should apply to grammar, punctuation, etc.
As for other web issues, I believe it's the browsers and search engines that dictate the style.

[Frocked]

For print media there are standards (styles), the Chicago Manual of Style. What is for the Web?

The Chicago Manual of Style should apply to grammar, punctuation, etc.
As for other web issues, I believe it's the browsers and search engines that dictate the style.

A link to those would be good

[weslinda]

Blitzen, perhaps you missed what I was saying by the "fade in" / "fade out" pages. When the overall page fades in or out is a very poor practice to overall design. Visitors are impatient and want to get to the information they are seeking quickly. Anything that isn't based on valuable content should be avoided.

Making your pages change like a book is something that should be avoided at all costs.

Regarding "flash introductions". It is well documented that these introductions are viewed by virtually none of the visitors to a site and if done incorrectly can take 30 seconds to 2 plus minutes to download, a poor design feature if your visitor is on a dial up connection.

I think that marketing is the whole point of a web site, but I think that you have to take overall user experience into the mix. You can't design a site hoping that all of your visitors are on broadband.

A clean, well done site using valid XHTML/HTML and CSS is above and away the best way to design a site, and ensure that visitors of all types can use your site effectively.

[blitzen]

WesLinda,
You're probably correct about the stats because flash intros are used too often in the wrong place. I'd like to read more about this. You say that it's well documented. Can you kindly point me to some places where it's documented?

While on dial-up, I found some dial-up flash that weren't burdensome and caught my attention (another marketing strategy). If done correctly, you can have such an interesting intro that the user will want to see it. Just like writing a book. You want the first pages to capture the reader's interest to continue.

My point was when designing a site, remember to appeal to the target market. There is no absolute, like avoiding flash. It isn't necessarily "poor practice" if the site is done done correctly. Page transitions and flash can and do work.

If I'm selling Avanti's (not the refrigerators, silly), chances are that the market will be on broadband. There would be some not on bb. The site would be mirrored the site for the dial-ups and redirect as appropriate.

Here are some nice flash intros that are captivating for the target audience. If they hired you, would you recommend that they change their page to XHTML/HTML and CSS because it's "above and away the best way to design a site"?

http://www.leoburnett.com/ (I loved that one. You gotta be a clicker.)
http://www.toysrus.com.au/site/default.htm
http://disney.go.com/home/today/index.html
http://www.daileyads.com/index2.htm

Think again and Think Big.

[weslinda]

For 99.9% of the market, these rules do apply. I am not in any way shape or form an advocate of a fully flash web site. It screams accessibility problems right out of the gate. Also, most organizations are not intelligent enough to optimize the size of a flash file for dialup users, so in most cases, it is simply a poor choice. Offering people an option for flash, or showing your "intro" off of your homepage, I believe is by far the best way to handle a new visitor. You don't know any information on that visitor till they arrive, making their life more challenging is not the best way to start their visit.

Guessing that the visitor should probably be on broadband is "poor practice". Guessing that visitor is using a traditional browser and not an aural one is "poor practice" as well. What happens when you visit Leo Burnett's site, or the Toys 'R Us site when a visitor is using a screen reader? These are the real points I'm discussing in my original post.

For the sites you listed, all of these are major, large organizations that have brand already. If I was looking for someone in Google to build a marketing push for my organziation LEO would not come up.

I think that to have a truly successful web site, it must be three key things.

1. Valid Code and design.
2. Accessible for all visitors, not just the majority.
3. Clean, attractive, and effective visually.

Those are the things that I'm working with in the post. And many of these things are items that I've recently learned. Accessibility did not used to be such an important factor to me, but it is much more critical now as the sites I now maintain are pointed at an older age group.

I simply feel that the 10 points that I made are for a specific reason, don't make assumptions about your visitors, as it only sets yourself up for failure in some sort of fashion.

[blitzen]

For print media there are standards (styles), the Chicago Manual of Style. What is for the Web?

The Chicago Manual of Style should apply to grammar, punctuation, etc.
As for other web issues, I believe it's the browsers and search engines that dictate the style.

A link to those would be good

Sorry, I can't make a link to my brain. I said that "I believe" - no supporting evidence except that everyone seems to follow what search engines dictate and can't do anything more than what browsers allow (unless it's an off-browser app).

[gpconnelly]

Hi again, weslinda.

In your response you suggested I looked at the differences in design amongst sites listed for review and sure enough they do, of course, vary radically. However, if you read the actual reviews of sites given you'll see that about 90% of what is said revolves around layout and usability -- not design per se.

You also go on to suggest there are major design differences between USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. I'm not American but as I understand it USA Today is a tabloid and Wall Street Journal is a broad-sheet newspaper... even so, the differences in design are marginal, compare like with like (a tabloid with a tabloid or a broad-sheet with a broad-sheet, for example) and there isn't much difference.

What is important is that all newspapers stick to established conventions - headlines on front page,columns of text with supporting headlines, sport at the back, etc. Both tabloids and broad-sheets tend to subscribe to these conventions. I think this is where the web will eventually end up so why not save a lot of time and jump right past the idea that this is a real design field?

There are, as I said, contexts where design issues do come into things on the web, just as there are with design for print, but for the most part web publishing and print publishing are really about conveying and transmitting information in words and pictures. Continuing with the analogy of newpapers, there are sites where design is all important, but that's like comparing say posters or comic books with newspapers.

You then say, you would "hate for a well written book to go unnoticed because we all chose to use the same covers instead of adding the flare that is necessary..." Well, I was brought up to believe one should never judge a book by its cover and you seem to be suggesting here that we should or could or might. I'm a little puzzled with this.

Needless to say, there are plenty of books out there with great cover designs that few people have ever read. When I think of books that have been successful, the bible for example, I can't believe they succeeded on the basis of their cover designs.

I can remember lots of books that I have read in terms of what they were about and who wrote them but I can't in all honesty remember many of their cover-designs. Apply this to websites and you begin to get an idea of what I'm on about.

[weslinda]

So, what is your definition of web design? If it doesn't include layout or usability?

[gpconnelly]

I think the best way to define web design would be to seperate it from what it's not. I don't think navigational elements, page layout, site structure as a whole, and text formatting (except maybe colour) should be the responsibility of the web designer. That doesn't leave much, but that's my point: I don't think we should leave much for the web designer and I don't think there is enough for it to warrant being called design.

I think web design should be to website building what interior design is to a house building. The layout, planning, wiring, structure, the way light switches go on and off, windows open, etc, are all basically standardized and/or left to a higher order of technicians. This isn't some sort of snobbery, it's important to have standardized ways of doing things, people expect that and benefit from it in terms of ergonomics.

In the future all these structural features will (ideally) be template driven. And the trend in this direction is already well underway; dynamic sites, CSS seperating design from content, etc, all facilitate this.

With standardization embraced the emphasis will be more on content, substance rather than form, and that has got to be a good thing. The big players are one step ahead here and have essentially given up on the idea of web design; for examples look at the BBC, CNN, and just about every major online retailer.

[weslinda]

Well, as a web designer, I have to disagree with your point. I don't think that web sites will all eventually use the same template.

I think that it simply won't happen. Many might be similar, but the problem is that you're assuming that everyone is at the level you discussed. Also, I think that your assuming a company will have mulitiple members on a design team.

The thing with web sites is that the type of content dictates the design. With many of the dynamic features coming online, it's more critical that these ideas and concepts work in perfect harmony.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16672236/ is an article sharing that web deisgner is one of the 10 hottest jobs. I disagree the position is going the way of an extinct animal.

Stepping back, many of the ideas even discussed here are beyond most web sites. Companies haven't standardized on anything, and with new technologies coming on board such as AJAX, the entire experience is changing each and every day.

And, if you ask any interior designer, I would bet that they would definately prefer to be involved in the entire building process, not just redoing a room already built. They can do much more if some of the core architectural components are tuned to the future interior design of the home.

You can't seperate layout from design in a true and most optimal building / design environment.