Give Them a Chance to Breathe
Designing a decompression area
Have you ever visited a website that had so much information on the home page you just didn't know where to begin? I've been to them too. It almost gives you a headache.
Marketing 101
Some of the best marketing minds have written (and I remember this from my own marketing classes in college) it is best to give your visitors a chance to decompress when they enter your store. Now of course they were referring to retail stores, but the same theory applies to websites. Take these two sites (click for a larger view):
Both are nicely designed, but the 2nd clearly gives you a moment to take in everything, figure out where you're needing to go...and then go there.
Be Nice to Your Users Through Simple Elegance.
As CNN clearly demonstrated...they have more links and loops because they are in fact a news company. However, as a user coming to their site....I get overwhelmed. If they would just set up a few custom paths for their users, I think their site would be much better received in the web. So remember this term...."Simple Elegance". It is the term we here at Justice Solutions coin for our design concepts.
Custom Pathways
I'll probably dedicate a blog to this next week and come back and link to it from here, but to give you a preview...I've been telling some of my larger clients that if you have more than 20 different places any user could go to from your home page....consider the use of custom pathways. Because even the most busy and huge sites could probably take the 100+ links they have (to major sections that is...not individual articles, etc.) and categorize their users to fit into maybe a handful of choices. So instead of a vacation destination having tons of links to hotels, flights, restaurants, attractions, etc. Change it to "Plan My Trip", "What to Do When I Arrive", "Where Can I Eat". Then once in that subpage...give them the options to plan their trip with links to your flights, hotels, etc.
Well that's it for this week. Remember....Simple Elegance....let the user take in your site....admire the design....hell you paid for it....so might as well let your users enjoy it too. Until next week....happy coding. Chief Superhero Doug, out.
Doug.
Marketing 101
Some of the best marketing minds have written (and I remember this from my own marketing classes in college) it is best to give your visitors a chance to decompress when they enter your store. Now of course they were referring to retail stores, but the same theory applies to websites. Take these two sites (click for a larger view):
Both are nicely designed, but the 2nd clearly gives you a moment to take in everything, figure out where you're needing to go...and then go there.
Be Nice to Your Users Through Simple Elegance.
As CNN clearly demonstrated...they have more links and loops because they are in fact a news company. However, as a user coming to their site....I get overwhelmed. If they would just set up a few custom paths for their users, I think their site would be much better received in the web. So remember this term...."Simple Elegance". It is the term we here at Justice Solutions coin for our design concepts.
Custom Pathways
I'll probably dedicate a blog to this next week and come back and link to it from here, but to give you a preview...I've been telling some of my larger clients that if you have more than 20 different places any user could go to from your home page....consider the use of custom pathways. Because even the most busy and huge sites could probably take the 100+ links they have (to major sections that is...not individual articles, etc.) and categorize their users to fit into maybe a handful of choices. So instead of a vacation destination having tons of links to hotels, flights, restaurants, attractions, etc. Change it to "Plan My Trip", "What to Do When I Arrive", "Where Can I Eat". Then once in that subpage...give them the options to plan their trip with links to your flights, hotels, etc.
Well that's it for this week. Remember....Simple Elegance....let the user take in your site....admire the design....hell you paid for it....so might as well let your users enjoy it too. Until next week....happy coding. Chief Superhero Doug, out.
Doug.
Posted by dougjustice at 11:36 AM | Link | 0 comments
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