Homepage Design/Usability
November 19th, 2009
In every site that I reviewed I asked these three simple questions.
- What is the company’s core business?
- What captures your attention?
- What do you think you can do?
The first one I viewed, though somewhat mainstream, was oge.com. I found that it was very easy to navigate through their homepage. The core business of the site was to inform their users of their services (good for business). I found a “pay my bill” button that took me right to where I needed to be and be on my way (good for business, good for users). If any recommendation for the site I’d would suggest making the search bar a tad bigger, making it easier to find. Also adding some contact info on the hompage, I’m not asking to be complete, but a contact number would have been useful if that was the reason for my visit.
Second was NFL.com. Soon as I click on this page I was immediately drawn to the headlines, next was the logo and scores. Again I thought the layout was very successful. The core of this company was obvious, football. The design was very clean and sharp and it was very easy to navigate through the site and find my way home again (good for users), through the Dallas Cowboys got me a little confused on why I even visited, wink.
And how can I talk about homepage design and not talk about the king of usability. Google. Unless you have been living under a rock Google almost rules the world, and their homepage is as simple as it gets. I see a logo and a search bar (good for users). But if I could recommend anything to Google, without being hurt or hunted, I would. Keep it simple Google you’re doing fine (please don’t hurt me).
The next part of the assignment was to find two unsuccessful homepages. Which is probably a lot easier than I made it, but I don’t really enjoy bookmarking bad sites. So I searched and I found.
First up, I saw a godaddy.com commercial and decide to visit. Slow down, I’m not doggin’ your Danika Patrick, but she was the only interesting thing on the page (good for business). It took me a sec to find where I needed to go (bad for users) and found that there was just way to much going on here. I might be a little new at this but I found that there was just way too much stuff to look at and everything was arranged very close together.
Lastly, I found one of the most god awful sites I’ve ever came across. Wait, before you click mute your speakers because your not going to like what you hear. International Nature Conservation. This site lacks in navigation in it’s own site as it does in beauty (bad for users). The 3 column layout have plenty of links without any organization. My recommendation for this one is to throw it in the garbage and start over. Sadly though, if you stuck around long enough, I noticed it was last updated November 2009. I’m glad they are keeping the earth beautiful, because they are slacking in the web world.
Now I’m not an expert, but I did enjoy the assignment. It really got me interested in keeping a visitor on a page long enough and having them repeat their visit. I look forward to designing pages that keep them interested and focused.