(Wow, it has been a long time since I've managed to post something here. No excuses. Well, I have excuses, but no one really wants to hear 'em anyway. Onward.)
Even though I haven't had time to post recently, I have been pretty much keeping up on my reading. Lots of good stuff has flown through my aggregator, but the two that stick out today are:
Both worth a read if you're at all responsible for a major website.
Young's article gives six tips to help avoid the bloated, direction-less homepages that so often show up. All are good tips. My favorite:
Think of every pixel as dynamic content. Very little on your homepage — besides the navigation and logo, of course — should be considered permanent. Some items will occupy space longer than others, but as the years roll by, everything should shift and change according to brand directives, seasons, events, mergers, and changes in product offerings.
I'd really highlight the "shift and change" part. Not radical redesigns, but rather tweaks and twists. On our page, we have a pretty large chunk of pixels that we change every 2-4 weeks. And, unlike most of the rest of the site, we're trying to be very graphical and often somewhat whimsical with this section. Of course, not everyone who visits the homepage clicks on this section, but it does help make the page feel dynamic and alive, not musty. Well worth the effort, I think.
Moll's article argues for website realignments, not redesigns:
The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven. One approach seeks merely to refresh, the other aims to fully reposition and may or may not include a full refresh. (Note that by “reposition,” I mean strategy and not physical location or dimensions.)
In the last two major updates we've done, I'd say one was a "redesign" and the other was a "realignment." I'm going to go out on a limb and say the realignment was much more useful. But, even if you were stuck with a redesign, you can use that as a starting point for realignment. We're constantly tweaking things, shifting the site (hopefully) closer to what the users need.
Posted by Karl
October 25, 2005 04:22 PM