Are arty farty websites a good idea?

[xoggoth]

Other director of my small plan z company is always sending me suggestions for the front page of our website that consist of loads of fancy artwork and vague wording like "Inspiring practical resources for outdoor learning" in huge letters.

It all looks very pretty but I mantain that what someone chancing on our site wants to do is ascertain as quickly as possible if we sell what they might want and if they don't find that out within a few seconds they will go elsewhere. We should therefore just describe our products succinctly and provide links to further details/shopping cart pages.

Any opinions on this issue? Cheers.

PS Google appears to agrees with me, anyway:

http://www.site-reference.com/articl...ll-Narrow.html

[cojak]

No.

His website will suck...

We've designed our website to meet our organisation's needs (more sales) rather than meeting the needs of our visitors (Video).

[PAH]

Why not try it?

Do two home pages, one as now, one blinged up, set up round robin DNS so every other visitor goes to the blinged one and see which style keeps their attention. After a day or two stick with the most popular one or the one that generates least number of complaints!

For a more professional opinion why not take a look at the top 100 websites and see which category they fall into. I'm guessing not many will be style over substance.

If flashy websites were all it took to be successful we'd still have flash based sites with those pre-loading splash screens!

[Platypus]

Part of my job is to figure out what certain software products do and what platforms they run on. So sometimes I'll be told that client X is running product Y.

So I go to the product Y website and all I find is a load of rubbish blathering on and on about synergy and enabling the enterprise.

It can be surprisingly difficult to find any part which says "oh by the way our product is Y and it does this".

I really do prefer sites which say "this is what we do" in straight-forward terms

[Halcyon]

One of the best books I've seen about web design was called "I don't want to have to think" - the ethos being that when you visit a site, the site's raison d'etre should be blindingly obvious and the visitor should be intuitively led to any interactions - downloads, forms, further info etc

If I find the inventor of the "pop-ups" (presumably the satanic "flash" as they elude pop-up blockers) that seem to dominate the web at the moment... the ones that dim the main site and say "xyz co is conducting a survey - your opinion is valuable to us... blah blah blah" before you've had the chance to read the home page I will hang them by their gender-specific bits and humiliate them by beating them soundly at chess!

R

[NickFitz]

One of the best books I've seen about web design was called "I don't want to have to think" - the ethos being that when you visit a site, the site's raison d'etre should be blindingly obvious and the visitor should be intuitively led to any interactions - downloads, forms, further info etc

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug - excellent book. There's a sample chapter available online which is relevant to xog's question, and it's in HTML rather than messing you about with PDF

If I find the inventor of the "pop-ups" (presumably the satanic "flash" as they elude pop-up blockers) that seem to dominate the web at the moment... the ones that dim the main site and say "xyz co is conducting a survey - your opinion is valuable to us... blah blah blah" before you've had the chance to read the home page I will hang them by their gender-specific bits and humiliate them by beating them soundly at chess!

They're usually done using JavaScript these days, although sometimes there's some foul and unholy alliance of JavaScript and Flash involved

One of the main reasons for their growth is that they can't be blocked by pop-up blockers - it's impossible for the browser to know if it's some irritation or the pretty slideshow you wanted to see in the first place.

You might think that the widespread adoption of pop-up blockers would have alerted the advertising and marketing bods of this world to the fact that people hate pop-ups, but no - they just get people to devise new ways of forcing them on us

[Moscow Mule]

Jesus holy ****, just make it better than this gem I found on websites that suck.. .

Ow me ears/eyes/fingers owwwww.

[Sysman]

Jesus holy ****, just make it better than this gem I found on websites that suck.. .

Ow me ears/eyes/fingers owwwww.

Ouch! I dislike horizontal scrolling in the first place, but that is truly awful.

Unsolicited sound is a no-no. I might be listening to a favourite piece of music, the news, on the telephone etc. The quickest way to get rid of unwanted sound is to kill the browser window or tab.

[Sysman]

No.

His website will suck...

Oops. That page doesn't work with Javascript disabled...

We've designed our website to meet our organisation's needs (more sales) rather than meeting the needs of our visitors (Video).

That link tells me I don't have a Windows Media plugin.

If he's going to parade bad websites, he really should get his own act together first. Actually he falls at the first hurdle with his choice of domain name, as anything with "sucks" in it is likely to be blocked by a corporate firewall.

[Sysman]

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug - excellent book. There's a sample chapter available online which is relevant to xog's question, and it's in HTML rather than messing you about with PDF

Thanks for the link. Your point about PDF is very valid. If I'm downloading a manual or similar then PDF is fine, but I really really really don't want to read it in my browser. Burying a PDF file behind Javascript is a pain too; I want it clearly labelled as a PDF (at the very least if I hover over the link) so that I can make the choice of downloading or viewing before it kicks off.