So Todd and I are going to make a go of Coyote Grits as a consulting company. And we know that while the art is cool, the web page is pretty much content free (a phone # and an e-mail address). So we've been tossing back and forth ideas on content and design. I'm working on content, we'll have a bunch of free services that do cool things, but we're still... ummm... coming to an agreement on design.
I liked the attitude at Prosthetic Monkey ("The customer isn't always right, but she's probably driving a nicer car."), but we both agree that the design isn't what we want to attract the pointy-haired ones with too much money.
So we're looking around at other sites to figure out what works and what doesn't. So here are some random sites that have a similar market, and my notes on them:
It requires at least two clicks to get to any information I might be interested in, and I've no clue from the stuff on the front page which two clicks that might be.
Links are, for the most part, hidden in ways that require me to adjust to their design (pretty much requires a mouseover to find the clickables, it's either something with a grey outline, or a black outline, or parenthesized graphics text, or grey graphics text except where it's not... (ie: the center column 2 out of 3)).
Cut all the navigation crap from the top (or the right or the left, but it only needs to be in one place), pull the meaningless icons, and it has promise. My $DEITY, they took up over half the height of my default browser window and two logical article spaces (Both the feature tittle and the Editor's Note, which I expected to be separate documents) to introduce one article (and it's not like they've only got one).
Contract with news.com , which, despite fitting more header information, a larger logo, two ads, and many more categories, still manages to feed me three headlines in that same default browser window, and getting to more is a spacebar away rather than making decisions on clicking. Upside is even better, although it's got one less ad.
Also, the "Subscribe now" should be at the bottom of the page, no one subscribes before figuring out what they're subscribing to. They could completely ditch the left hand column and lose nothing.
After a bit of poking around I know that they do something vaguely conceptual, but I've no idea what their deliverables are ("Where learning lives"?) and they've run out of clicks.
Entrance tunnel. 'nuff said.
Well, except "no alt tags" either. A site gets two clicks tops to tell the user that there's content here. I need 3 to just get to the opening menu which still hasn't presented any content.
Well, okay, on my third "there's gotta be something here" visit, digging a little bit deeper I find that their client list isn't linked.
First response:
perl -e 'print "Oh. My."; foreach $deity @deities { print " $deity"; }'
Second response:
Ya know, if you accept that users will have image loading and JavaScript and all that crap turned on, this site actually isn't really that bad.
They've got a navigation paradigm and they stick to it, kind of (Circles are clickable, except for in the company info where the buttons are squares, but still at least recognizeable as navigation elements). If you go without a Flash enabled browser it's actually more consistent.
It's clear what you're selecting when you're clicking.
They only break the back-button once.
They do require that style sheets be turned on rather than allowing the user to configure their browser appropriately, but that's only in one screen labeled "Experiments" (the same place that they break the back button).
No entrance tunnel, really, the nav stuff is immediately there, as long as you don't get entranced by the blinking lights.
The site does work from Un*x.
Now they do require that image loading be turned on, but for them the flashy stuff really is their content, and they make no claims at user centered design, they're doing advertising brochures, pure and simple.
Friday, September 24th, 1999 danlyke@flutterby.com