Monday, November 15, 2010

Animation on the Homepage

In the bad old days of website design, you had to go through a splash page to reach the homepage. It was a wonderful opportunity for artistic directors to shine. However, users hated it. Eventually, website decision makers saw the light and splash pages have completely disappeared except in history books and ad agency websites.

The new plague is large image rotation on homepages. These take up more than half a laptop screen and rotate every few seconds. They are the new way for artistic directors to win awards. Unfortunately, they often reduce usability and contribute very little toward website objectives.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Website Homepage Design

Everyone agrees on the importance of the website homepage. But did you know that designing the homepage is a lot like coaching the Montreal Canadian hockey team. Both have all their tiniest decisions scrutinized by the fans, the media and the owners. All these “stakeholders” want more of this, less of that, while having never managed a hockey team or designed a single web page.