Website Snob
Posted by Kevin Hazard, March 20th, 2006
Hi, my name is Kevin, and I have a problem… I am a website snob… Everyone chimes in with a monotonous “Hi Kevin”…
I don’t know when exactly it happened, but at some point in the 8 (or so) months I have worked with Site5, I have developed a chronic snobbishness directly related to what I would consider a good/clean/well-organized site design. The funniest part about my condition is that I feel like Simon Cowell… I can tell you what I think doesn’t “work” on the site, but I don’t think I, myself, could design a site that I would classify as “good” (I’ve never heard Simon Cowell sing, but I can imagine it wouldn’t be up to par on the lofty scale he is known to use to judge).
As a disclaimer, I understand that I am not artistic in any sense of the characteristic, and I don’t have a set of guidelines that qualify a well-designed site… It is definitely a case-by-case judgement, and the smallest changes can make all the difference, but I do have a quick reference of my design pet peeves that should often be avoided.
The List
- Know What You Are Doing: This requirement is the one that keeps me from designing anything of substance… I have not taken the time to learn everything I need to know about site structure and organization. Take the time to learn the “Why?” of what the different code means. You can do plenty with the “How?” everything works, but you will be much more effective in communicating exactly what you want to and how you want to when you have a better understanding of what you are doing. A great example of this point is evident in most page-customizers for template-based sites like MySpace… People use things like “PimpMySpace” because they have no idea how to customize their site without it, and they wind up with sites that trigger a gag reflex in every web designer on the face of the planet.
- Navigation is PRIMARY: Your site should be built upon a navigational structure… The pages shouldn’t just be thrown together with a sidebar of links that vaguely direct people to the right places. In addition to being more effective in SEO, it is a good thing to have people able to find what they are looking for (assuming they know what they are looking for). The KISS philosophy is great in planning this structure… As Todd mentioned in a discussion we are having on the topic, “If you make it complex, it doesn’t work. I don’t want a manual on how to use your nav.”
- More Content ≠ “More Good”: Sites should be designed to get the important information across immediately and cleanly. SEO makes this tough because there is a tradeoff between crawlable content and actually communicating the content well. Website visitors are like résumé-checkers in the job interview process: Guide them to the important information and don’t write more just to fill a page.
- CSS is Your Friend: It is important to have a single design for your site (not multiple independent styles going on in different places). Rod has been doing a lot of work on the Site5 corporate site to get this done, and it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination because it is an amalgamation of old, static content as well as new, dynamic content.
- Use Divs Instead of Tables: Well-designed sites don’t necessarily need to be “standards compliant” to look good, but it is painful to see tables gone wrong on a webpage… And from my limited knowledge, divs are easier to modify and update (to keep them dynamic).
- Have Reason to Have Music: It is an instinctual reaction for me to close a site that decides it wants to play some random song as I visit the page… I can see the exception to this being a musical artist’s page, but even then, it should be an optional feature, not default-on. I think I am picky about this because I always listen to music on my computer, and the garbled mess that erupts in the cohesion of iTunes and FireFox is less than pleasant.
- Leave the Splash in the Water: On a few occasions, it may be okay to have a splash page for your site, but in general, it is a bad idea. You are essentially putting up a barrier between the visitor and your site (especially if it requires them to click something)… Don’t believe me? Put up a splash page on your site and watch the exit-rate on that page. Site5 made the mistake of having a splash page up for a semi-extended period, and we saw a whole lot of lost traffic before people even got to see the content of our site… It is much better for someone to leave your index page: At least then they had a chance to see what you wanted them to see.
- Know Thy Graphics: Make sure your graphics fit your site and look good… It is not good to see pixels in a graphic, and having an 8 megapixel digital camera picture load after 20 seconds is both painstakingly slow and most likely much too large for any good site: I run a 24″ monitor in 1920×1200 resolution, and that size picture is probably too big for my screen maximized. If you want peopel to get to a big picture, thumbnail it and have the picture accessed directly… Your site visitors will thank you. With the Web 2.0 Invasion, simple designs get you the most points… Only use a few colors, clean lines, gradients, and empty space to your advantage.
So half an hour later, I realize that I probably have a lot more to complain about with regard to web design, but I will cut the post short so other people can chime in with their web design pet peeves. Leave a comment about what “Grinds Your Gears” (thank you, Family Guy) or if you disagree with one of my sweeping statements. We are constantly and improving our site design, and Todd wanted me to remind you that “any comments about our design will be killed immediately”… just joking… maybe… 
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5 Responses to “Website Snob”
January 5th, 2007
[...] If I didn’t diatribe against music on websites and we weren’t concerned with what kind of copyright infringement we would be committing, you would hear Ice Ice Baby’s recognizable melody looping through your computer speakers right now. Yo VIP, Let’s kick it.No, this post isn’t going to talk about “Rolling in my 5.0 with my rag-top down so my hair can blow,” but we are taking another line (very out of context) to heart: “Slice like a ninja, cut like a razorblade so fast…” We’re makin’ moves like we’re wearing parachute pants and sequin-encrusted jackets. In a recent email to customers, Matt announced, “As part of our ongoing effort to provide a high performance hosting experience, we will be redistributing a large number of web hosting accounts to a fleet of new servers. More specifically, the number of accounts on many of our hosting servers will be cut in half.” In order to ensure that we are providing the best hosting experience across our entire fleet, we are “Spreading the love” to our customers by spreading accounts across a new installation of servers. What will it look like? I thought you’d never ask (I set myself up for another oddball reference)… Yes… “We will call them Mini-Servers!” (not really, but that would be funny). The process of moving the accounts will run in the next few days, and all customers that will be moved will also be notified about the specifics of their account activity before the process begins.Upon completion of the server moves, we will have a more balanced fleet of servers with even better uptime, load levels, and service quality. Enjoy, and “Beeehaaaaayve.” Tell others about this post: delicious   /   digg   /   spurl   /   furl   /   reddit [...]
January 29th, 2007
[...] There is a huge learning curve in site design. Because Matt and Rod built our site from the ground up as their earliest html/php projects, the first designs were probably as much limited by ability as they were designed with intent. I posted a list of pet peeves which these old pages vehemently violated, but we have learned a great deal about effective web design from these prior versions. Effective site design should be seen as a continual process, not a goal to reach and forget about. [...]
February 11th, 2007
I hate websites entirely made in Flash. Most take forever to load even though all they have is text anyway.
February 11th, 2007
Ooh, yeah… Good call on that one, Marcus. When I was in high school, I played basketball, and one of the guys on the team was an internet guru (from our perspective), and he made our site in flash. This was when Flash was relatively uncommon, so there was some novelty in it, but not being able to refresh specific pages and having to wait for it to load (on a 56k modem) got old pretty fast.
November 6th, 2007
There have been many calls recently for good internet standards. Personally I feel that this is not a bad idea. I do hate the sites that send you round and round in circles without you being able to access what you’re looking for. You’re not a snob, in my opinion you are just calling for better web design.