For the last week I have been scouring some sites for best practices. During my search I have come across the occasional moment of interest. But more often I have found great ideas that weren’t fully executed. Fantastic puzzle pieces that never create the whole picture. Missed opportunities for sites to really shine.
This got me thinking about what makes up a best practice. Here’s my take: Read More→
For the most part, I’d rather have a root canal than use most support Websites.
Search for information and you end up with a list of a bazillion documents with truncated descriptions that read like Sanskrit.
Want to take a different path? Try ferreting your product out of a laundry list of every product the company ever made.
Or try the “follow our logical links” scenario—where you end up drilling to China.
At the end of all of this wonderfulness is the real insult. Support content that either requires an engineering degree to understand—or a wad of general purpose instructions that dance around the problem and miss the issue by a country mile. Read More→
This week, we took the new Intel.com site for a spin. Let’s just say there’s more (and less) to this site than meets the eye.Intel.com’s latest redesign is like buying an exotic car. It is visually striking, can be fun to drive, and has more bells and whistles than other cars on the road. But going exotic has tradeoffs. Choosing to pass on getting the full options package can leave the driving experience far less exciting than advertised. In fact, it may even break down–always in inconvenient locations. And the unique controls and design that seems edgy and innovative in the beginning quickly become confusing and irritating.
In this Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother we take IBM.com’s new mega-menu for a spin (or two).Fair warning, this post is long!
IBM.com has launched revised home and solutions pages that feature the next major piece in its evolution: a new take on mega-menus. Not surprisingly, IBM.com has put its own spin on what is fast becoming an industry norm. In this Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother we weigh in on the pros and cons of IBM.com’s latest design. Read More→
2011 is turning out to be the age of the home page. We’re seeing updates in record numbers– and some designs are actually breaking new ground. On the other hand, few of these designs are actually making it down to lower levels of the site—which is a big no-no in our book.
I’ll leave that point for a future rant. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at who’s producing these new home pages, the important design points and strategies they bring to the party—and explore the age-old question: why only the home page?
I’ll start with the “who” and “how” and leave my humble opinions for the end. Read More→
In this Don’t Miss/Don’t Bother we tackle HP.com’s new home page launch—and the waterfall effects on this mega site.I have been watching the latest HP.com home page launch for the last three weeks with great interest—waiting to see how the new home page design would shake out. But after all this time, I am left wondering what on earth HP.com thinks it’s doing.
A short history. The cycle started about three weeks ago with a new home page, which suddenly disappeared the next day. Next, it appeared again in a rotation with the old home page. Within a week, there were 3 versions of the home page—then 4—and now we’re up to at least 5. Add two animated versions that show the visitor how to use the home page’s feature panels and navigation—and you have the whole picture.
I don’t know if HP.com will eventually settle on something—or will continue playing Russian roulette with its home page. But I do know that I’ve learned four things watching this…um…unique launch. Read More→
Think you know how to design the perfect home page? Engineer the most efficient Website architecture? Think again. Because SAP.com has changed all the rules of the game.What would you think if someone told you they could eliminate the first 3 layers of your site? The blizzard of landing pages. Semi-redundant content. Pesky page load times. All of it.
Sounds impossible? It’s not. Read More→
Today apple.com startled some visitors with a “startpage” (it’s from the URL—it didn’t really have that name per se) chock full of the latest and greatest goings on at Apple.com. News, Tutorials, Movie trailers iTunes, and of course, the latest shopping deals. Apple…whaddya thinking?
Apple.com is the poster child of the latest minimalist design craze. Website teams everywhere are examining its site design to crack the code on presenting the most information in the simplest way. And the fact is, this startpage is overload for most companies today. That means it is a downright avalanche for Apple.com.
So please Apple.com. Continue to emulate the beautiful stark minimalism of the Apple products on your Website. Keep us guessing how you present your information so simply, but effortlessly. Please don’t change. We like you just the way you are.
I don’t talk about Oracle.com much. In fact, I speak about them so little that one would be lead to believe that I hold a grudge against them. Sure, they unceremoniously erased one of the best enterprise systems sites from the Internet–Sun.com. But, I won’t hold that against them. No, I don’t write about them much for one reason:
My Mother taught me if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.
There’s a litany of issues I have with Oracle.com ranging from design to innovation (or rather a lack thereof). But today, my rant is about Oracle.com’s content. Read More→
The devil is in the detailsLast month Cisco released the latest evolution of Cisco.com, and the results are nothing short of amazing. Visitors taking a quick spin around top levels of the site will notice obvious improvements. The introduction of a more vibrant color palette. Updated page layouts. A new toolbar at the bottom of the page. And, some tweaks to its best-in-class mega-menu. But these enhancements, while nice, aren’t what make this redesign a step above the rest. The things that make the difference are far more subtle. Read More→
