Interesting article. Here, in case you don't feel like reading (hey, it's Friday...I get it...I'm lucky if any actually reads this post let alone a link) here are the 5 Things:
- Make proper use of white space
- Use an appropriate color scheme
- Have clear navigation
- Ignore the "Keep Everything Above the Fold" mantra
- Sell yourself (provide links to facebook, twitter, offers to subscribe, "add to cart" buttons, etc)
The view that not everything important needs to go above the fold goes against what we've been talking about in class. Honestly, when it was brought up at first in class, I sort of had the same thought as the guy in Life Below 600 when he says "people have learned to scroll." It seemed weird to me that a print concept was being applied in the digital world, because as we learned in our first assignment, print does not always translate to web and we can't think of web design as the same as print design.
The end of the article sums it up best:
What I'm proposing is for you to think twice about these ‘rules’ which are preached so often around the web and aim to create something original. Don't live in the old world of pushing all your quality content on the visitor at once because they've only got 4 seconds before their attention drops (or whatever other statistic is doing the rounds at present).So I liked what this article had to say. I agree with it. Done right, I feel the fold can be ignored. There, I said it. Out loud.
Think about the ultimate journey you want them to take. Entice them in, make them actively want to scroll and read on, and on, and on. Guide them with your excellent content and let them explore your site. Tell a story with your content. Space it out a little and you will have some happy visitors who actually want to be there!
The author also expressed my feelings that I touched upon in my previous post regarding the "big boring business website layout formula:
Samey. I like that.A very fitting word to describe the state of web design at present would be‘Samey’So many sites have the same, big header, big fat call to action buttons, a sidebar, a big fat footer and the letterpress effect scattered about. Finding a bit of originality in the sea of sameyness is pretty difficult these days.
And after reading Learn to F#!king Spell by the same author, I think me and Mr. Paddy just might be kindred spirits.
Labels: tips
4 Comments:
I think your blog is beautiful! :3 and I really like this post.
Thanks!! :O)
I understand what people say when sites are sometimes are too boring, but here is what my client, Nick, has to say (which I agree with):
"See my philosophy has always been that user interface and experience always go before design when creating a business site. so the most important thing to me is the clients experience, not necessarily how the site looks. In other words it does need to stay professional first however like I said, if you can think creatively as to how using a design elements (something functional that could be created through flash or java) might both add to the functionality and look of the site..."
Corporate websites (which keep in mind the internet was pretty much made for) are based on user experience rather than the elaborate use of design elements to simply spice up the design.
One definition I have found of Graphic and Web Design is 'thinking made visual'. Studying how people respond to the website layout and experience is crucial to having a great functional website.
The reason why things are all "SAMEY" is because it keeps the user experience consistent. I'm not hating on originality, some is good, but don't completely revolutionize the way people browse the web. More people are turned off by elaborate layouts and unique interfaces.
People want it fast, and they want it now, so to help achieve that, website layouts need to be all samey. Especially with the focus being on mobile devices now.
Technically, the internet was made for the military and academia. ;)
But seriously, I get what you're saying. But if they have to be samey, at least they could do it well. Some of the samey-ness is just plain bad. I pointed out a few examples of both the good and bad in a previous post on 30 corporate websites.
I think there is a way to have the same structure and user interface and still retain uniqueness. Not to be a suck-up or anything but http://www.olympusamerica.com does it well. Here's some other ones: http://www.foehn.co.uk, http://www.redbrickhealth.com. This one is really unusual: http://www.silverbackapp.com.
Retaining usability is definitely key, because if it doesn't matter how pretty it is if it is useless. But if we were all to stay samey back in 1996, we'd all still be coding pages like the Web King. ;)
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