Usability is paramount. Over anything else, you want the reader to come to your site, easily find what they're looking for and not get discouraged. You also want them to stay and listen to what you have to sell or say. The internet is a lot like the radio or TV. If the program you're watching or listening to is unclear or uninteresting or the music is bad, then usually you leave.
Good usability in website design means minimizing or eliminating turn-offs. The worst thing you want the user to feel is frustration. I think from all the readings I've done on effective web design and usability, the overarching theme seems to be a focus on simplicity and clarity. Usually a lot of thought and sometimes testing must be done in order to select what you want a user to get out of your site as well as how they should navigate through the site.
Some things that I thought were interesting:
don't use stock images. I've used stock images from dreamstime and iStock, and I've been very careful to select unique and interesting photos. I've also seen sites, however, that pick very generic stock photos, and it's obvious and easy to spot. It's really similar to looking at a sign for a store that's done in comic sans or picante (two easily recognizable fonts included with microsoft word). It screams of unoriginality and conveys to the viewer that there's nothing special here.
don't use anything that even resembles an ad. I didn't realize that even content that looks like an ad is ignored by website visitors. It makes a lot of sense, though; anything that looks like an ad probably is, and don't we all hate commercials?
Some good websites:
- National Institutes of Health - http://www.nih.gov/
- Suprisingly, this government organization has a very effective website. Clearly laid out with a clean, focused design, it adheres to normal website conventions, navigation bars at the left and top of the screen, and searches (e.g., job seach) that are easy to understand and filter. Search results area also displayed in a clear table format with important headers in bold. On first visit to the site, it's obvious where important information is and the site also offers a site map at the very bottom.
- Alex Dukal - http://circografico.com.ar/
- This site just blew me away. Does all it needs to do, shows the artist's work (he's an illustrator), and give you easy access to any pertinent information about him. Clear, beautiful, and a tremendously good job at showcasing his talents. All the elements, from the text font to the use of whitespace and composition of the site are all carefully selected to provide an aesthetically pleasing site as well as a website that is very easy for the user to navigate through. His portfolio also has enlarged portions of interesting parts of each work and intuitive next >> and previous navigation. A case where less is definitely more; the site really gets out of the way and gives a nice framework for the art to speak for itself.
Some bad ones:
- Cyber Rebate - http://www.cyberrebate.com/
- This website looks more like a template than an actual website. Filled with tons of stock photos and stock text, there's nothing that makes this website interesting. Even the name of the website is in regular text. This is usually the thing readers see first and it's important to catch their attention with it.
- Amby's Directory of Resources - http//:amby.com
- Cramped text, and no real sense of organization. And the design of the site is very plain with nothing that really grabs the attention of the reader. photos are inconsistent and appear to have been plucked from random places around the web. The lack of whitespace makes the site hard to read and disheveled.
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