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→
With some best practices and innovations in store.Recently Marty Gruhn and I put IBM.com’s new mega-menu under the microscope and the results were…well…less than stellar. But a couple accidental slips of my cursor exposed some other new designs and approaches that are well worth taking a spin around the IBM.com site.
Navigation first, content second. If you click on one of the artfully hidden “all” links in IBM.com’s mega-menu (i.e. “all solutions” or “all services”) you will land on a page that is so simply designed and elegant that you will think you landed on a different site. You didn’t. This is the highest of the high levels of the new IBM.com. Sophisticated design aside, what is most notable is how the page is focused solely on navigating to the rest of the site. Broad, big-bucket links take visitors to more specific information, while the content only sets the context. Read More→
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→
When Cisco.com launched its mega-menu last year it set the best practice bar—and it was high. The mega-menu provided greater access into a large (and sometimes unwieldy) site. Its design was easy to scan and use. And, it was also attractive—which is no small feat in a small space. In the siteIQ blog Cisco launches drop down mega menus & fat footers, we applauded the design and architecture of its Product and Services menu. This post welcomes the Support menu into the best practice fold. 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→
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.
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→
In a world where content has been king, white space design is the new tail that wags the dog.I’ve had space on my mind. Not the kind that Stephen Hawking talks about. The kind that’s finally getting the attention of enterprise-class Web design teams.
It is the power of white space—negative space—empty space–the void.
The importance of using white space in Website design isn’t a brand new concept. One can find plenty of blogs and examples on the subject. A couple of IT sites have also tinkered with it over the past few years. Apple.com has mastered it. Intel.com isn’t far behind.
But now the results are in regarding how negative space designs directly enhance usability. This has turned designing with white space from an avant garde concept into a usability requirement.
So what’s so great about negative space? If you aren’t into design or have been too busy with your day job to pay attention, here are the main benefits:
