I was at a company the other day that I’m considering investing in. They walked me through their v2 web design and we did a detailed review of it. While it’s much improved over v1, there were still plenty of things that could be improved. One of the people in the meeting suggested everyone review the list of Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005.
In addition I’d recommend everyone click through the following links and look carefully at the page design.
- Google: Bad Web Design
- Yahoo: Bad Web Design
- MSN: Bad Web Design
Forget about the content – just concentrate on the design. Is that [blue black green] thing the Google standard, Yahoo standard, or Microsoft standard? Given that this is what people look at 90% of the time they search, why would you present search results in a different way?
And – in case you are wondering – there are great examples of Flash. Take a look at this IKEA site (thanks Eric D) – make sure you pan left and right. When Amy and I bought our house in Alaska, we went online and bought an entire house full of furniture at JCPenney.com in an afternoon. Unfortunately, the didn’t have a “buy a house full of furniture button” at the time – if they had, our online experience would have been that much easier.