Wireframe. Sitemap. Diseño. How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business. Advertisement Many e-commerce sites these days tend to be loaded down with too much information on their landing pages. The reasoning for cluttered e-commerce sites is simple: the more information you can cram on the page, the more the user will buy. Unfortunately, web buyers are a finicky bunch. Jacob Nielsen reports that web users are becoming much more impatient1 while shopping and browsing online. Instead of spending their time going to a site’s homepage and finding the content by categories or other product recommendations, most shopping is done by quick Google searches.
If the user can’t find what she’s looking for right away, she’s gone. It’s crucial to have simple web designs to allow the user to quickly find the information they need, especially if you are selling a product. However, it’s become a common practice to do just the opposite. e-commerce sites have taken this “scatter shot” approach of trying to slap the potential buyer with as many options as possible. It's done. Redesigning Craigslist With Focus On Usability. Advertisement Craigslist is obviously one of the most popular websites in the world, and each month it serves millions of users who post and view classified ads on the website. At the time this article was written, Craigslist was ranked as the 28th most-visited English-language website in the world by Alexa. Despite the fact that Craigslist receives such a huge amount of traffic each month, it is also criticized for its design, which seems to be at least 10 years out-of-date. This very basic design has also become a huge part of Craigslist’s branding, and it helps make the website memorable and instantly recognizable.
As a result, the company has benefited in some ways from a design that many people consider to be very subpar. Over the years, as various design trends have come and gone, Craigslist has bucked the trends and stubbornly maintained it’s bare-boned approach. The Goals Before starting any type of evaluation, it’s important to clarify what exactly we hope to accomplish. 1. 2. 3. Designing “Read More” And “Continue Reading” Links « Smashing Ma. Advertisement Most bloggers and website designers understand how difficult it can be to attract visitors to a website. In fact, most websites have just moments to attract potential readers. Several factors contribute to how well a website attracts its readers. These factors include well-written headlines, interesting content and design quality. Every website has its own way of asking readers to click on an article link. Best Practices Before we present the showcase, let’s understand why “Read more” links are so important. Also, “Read more” links allow website administrators to more easily track the most popular content.
The third and probably most practical reason for having “Read more” links on a website is money. Now that we understand why “Read more” links are so important, let’s investigate some best practices for implementation. 1. By far the most popular method of presenting “Read more” links is with simple text. Tutorial9 PSDTuts Smashing Apps CSS Tricks David Airey Freelance Switch 2. 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines « Smashing Magazine. Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites. 1.
Form Labels Work Best Above The Field A study by UX Matters1 found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. 2Tumblr3 features a simple and elegant sign-up form that adheres to UX Matter’s recommendation. Positioning labels on the left also poses another problem: do you left-align or right-align the labels? 2. People instinctively notice other people right away when they come into view. Eye-tracking heat map of a baby looking directly at us, from the UsableWorld study4. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. The 10 Most Common Mistakes Web Designers Make. Aug 03 2009 There are plenty of mistakes web designers (especially new ones) make when designing websites. Everything from poor design to simple oversight happen every day. But with a little diligence, they can easily be avoided. Below are ten of the most common mistakes web designers make, along with examples of sites who do things right.
Some of these are easy to correct if you’re aware of, others might take a bit more time. But all are fixable and worth the time and effort to correct. 1. “White space” or “negative space”, space that is empty of elements other than your background design, is an incredibly important design element. In addition to white space, don’t try to put too much on a single page. 2.
Unless the sites you’re designing are completely static, somehow showcasing new information and content is vital to good design. There are a few ways to approach this. 3. Links are one of the most important parts of a website. There are two things to keep in mind here. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Newspaper websites need to improve their readability. Most newspaper websites are doing a bad design job in making their stories readable. Too many are using: small fonts,long off-putting paragraphs,no subheadings,no in-content boxes or pictures, andno in-content links. To explain more, I’ve written a companion post on online readability (design, not writing – and this post was first published here). And here’s an example each of their news stories so you can see the issue: Daily Mail, Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times. Main readability design mistakes This table summarises the main ways they are going wrong.
Tiny fonts They are all using font sizes that are too small for comfortable reading on copy-heavy pages. But most of the sites use 12 or 13px fonts for body copy. No sub-headings Long paragraphs Nearly half use long paragraphs, serving up great slabs of unappealing copy. Bad readability These three are vying for last place when it comes to readability. Fairly poor readability Getting there Headings explained. 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design. Whitney Hess is an independent user experience designer, writer and consultant based in New York City. She authors the blog Pleasure and Pain.
When I tell people that I am a user experience designer, I usually get a blank stare. I try to follow it up quickly by saying that I make stuff easy and pleasurable to use. That’s the repeatable one-liner, but it’s a gross oversimplification and isn’t doing me any favors. The term “user experience” or UX has been getting a lot of play, but many businesses are confused about what it actually is and how crucial it is to their success. I asked some of the most influential and widely respected practitioners in UX what they consider to be the biggest misperceptions of what we do. User experience design is NOT... 1. ...user interface design It’s not uncommon to confuse “user experience” with “user interface” — after all it’s a big part of what users interact with while experiencing digital products and services. 2. ...a step in the process 6. ...expensive.
Online Advertising And Its Impact On Web Design. In recent years, advertising has become a major revenue source for many websites. Not too long ago, online ads were often met with disapproval from visitors, and advertisers were unsure about their value or effectiveness. Today, most visitors have come to expect ads on commercial websites, and advertisers have recognized the potential of various online ad opportunities. Ads have long been a part of print publications, such as magazines and newspapers, and now they essentially have the same role in online periodicals and publications. Although advertising is a concern for website owners and those pushing products or services, it is also has an impact on Web designers, because they have to be able to design and develop websites that can produce ad revenue and still meet the needs of visitors.
Ads on The Raw Story seem to be squeezed in wherever possible, to the detriment of the content. Starting with the Basics Why do advertisers pay for ads? What are advertisers paying for? Colors Flow 1. 2. 50 Beautiful And Creative Portfolio Designs. Advertisement Design portfolios come in various forms.
Traditionally, they have been print-based and something you would carry to a client pitch or meeting to showcase what you’ve done and how you did it. Today, many designers take advantage of the Internet to publish and showcase their work via their online portfolios. Having your work displayed online removes the geographical restraints that traditional portfolios impose on you. With many portfolios online, it’s often hard to stand out from the sea of competition out there. It takes a creative design to grab the user’s attention long enough for him or her to enjoy sifting through your work. Adding rich interactive elements, framing your work in a unique way, and concocting a means of providing a unique experience can not only get the user’s attention but also show your capabilities as a designer.
In this showcase, you’ll find a variety of beautiful, unique and highly creative portfolio designs. 50 Beautiful and Creative Portfolios. How Little Do Users Read? (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)