Web Page Analysis
David
Brodie
Before
giving my opinion of good and not so good web sites, I would like to pose the
question as to why people use the world wide web. In my opinion there are only
three main uses of the net; amusement, reference and commerce. Amusement
encompasses the likes of art, in its many forms, fun, gaming, downloads and of
course adult entertainment.
Reference can be broken
down to increasing your knowledge, be it academically, technically, or
personally. By commerce I refer to
internet shopping, product promotion, banking and financial information.
Depending
on how and why one uses the net,
should therefore determine the pros and cons of the ease of navigation, the
design, and the presentation of any particular web site. In my opinion it is
therefore necessary, when comparing web sites, and by this I am primarily
referring to the opening (home) page, to confine ones appraisal to sites of the
same category. For example, in the first category, amusement, one would expect
a presentation that would be arty, with design as a major factor. In commerce,
however, one would expect the reverse
situation with much more emphasis on navigation and probably as much
white space as possible. Likewise educational reference pages need to have a plain and simple presentation with
very little fancy design which is usually the case.
For
enthusiasts in all walks of life, the design of the page is really irrelevant
as the user will probably be so interested with the content of the web site
that he will be oblivious to the pointers mentioned in this brief. This also
applies to shoppers on the web with the noticeable difference that these sites
must be quick to download and have easily negotiable links to products.
Web
sites containing multiple pages need to be navigated and this can only be
achieved by the use of links. It is therefore difficult to criticise the ease
of navigation of web sites as,
assuming that the links work, the large majority of web sites have some form of
‘table of contents’ so that the user can navigate through the site
with ease. Therefore, the only
way a site would be difficult to
navigate is if the table of contents is not immediately noticeable or
incomplete. This is extremely rare.
For the
purpose of this brief, I have taken two national newspapers, the Daily Mirror,
and the Daily Telegraph. I have looked at the time that each took to load, how
the presentation of their front page compares, and their individual ways of
navigation.
The
Daily Mirror
In my
experience I have found that most newspaper sites take longer than normal to
load, and this site takes forever, tying up all other computer functions until the web page is fully loaded. In
my case, with a 56k modem, one minute, thirty five seconds.
If one
is living abroad, especially in Africa, where I lived for two and a half years,
where the speed of connection is not very good, together with the constant threat of a power cut, a
lengthy loading time is really unacceptable. and should an ex-pat wish to see
what is happening back in the old country, he would be forced to look elsewhere
for his news.
When,
at last, the page opens, you are greeted by a sea of red, perhaps the most
jarring of colours, not at all pleasing to the eye. I understand that The Mirror as well as The Sun newspapers
are called “Red Tops” in the media industry but I feel that the web
designers have taken this too far.
The page is divided into three sections. a simple table of contents on the left hand side, the news in the middle section, often with different headlines for the same story, with a “........more” as the link to the full story page. These headlines are interspersed with category links. On the right hand section, a mixture of further news stories links and pictorial links to particular writer’s columns. Altogether a bit of a mishmash and not as simple as the Daily Telegraph site.
The
Daily Telegraph
This
takes half the time of the Mirror to load. It has a white background. A
comprehensive table of contents on the left hand side of the page in blue ( a
more agreeable colour). A
colourful header which includes a navigation jump bar. Directly below are three boxed links
(again in blue) to magazine type articles. The middle of the page is split in
two. To the left are all the news headlines with a brief synopsis of the item
of news. A simple click on the headline is the link to the full story page. On
the right, blue headed partitions showing various sections of the newspaper,
such as travel, finance, opinion, sport etc. with very short headlines as
links. There is also one pictorial image on the right side of the page. This
image is a link which opens up a pop up page showing the daily satirical
cartoon created by Matt with the main page still visible behind the close able
pop up window.
This
comparison does show the good and bad points of web sites however to pick out
an example of a bad site has, for me, been almost impossible as the large
majority of sites that I have accessed are well designed, easy on the eye and
simple to navigate. I have, however, managed to find a poor site which oddly
enough is local.
The
site I refer to is The Wirral Trader.
The
Wirral Trader.
When it
eventually loads and you have entered the main page of the site you will
immediately notice that the page is far too busy There are links scattered all
around the page, some in plain text, others in pictorial boxes. There are site
sponsors all over the place and other unnecessary goodies like tickatape messages
and a weather update. I found that
my browsers, Netscape, I.E, Opera and iCab all had problems opening the site
and eventually I gave up looking for the link I was searching for. I feel that
the designer of this site got carried away with all the available goodies
making the site over complex, cluttered and too long to download.
In
conclusion I feel that when designing a web site, one should keep it as
straightforward and pleasing to the eye as possible . You should bare in mind
who your page is going to appeal to before using graphics and web page goodies
(java scripts/flash/timelines) as these can be distracting and will take time
to load. It is also important to keep in mind that not necessarily all browsers
supports all web page design and some pages may not work as intended.
It is
also worth mentioning that there are people whose main entertainment is surfing
the net, where search engines and curiosity sends them all over the net. Should
a surfer happen upon your site, only by making it attractive and
straightforward would you attract his attention and he may even have a look around.
Below I
have listed a few sites that show examples of some of the comments that I have made.
http://www.geocities.com/ss_seal/menu.htm
From
the URL address I believe this is a personal site but shows a very artistic yet
simple page, nice use of java script and tasteful graphics. A perfect match for
the music enthusiast.
http://www.ibank.barclays.co.uk
Here we
see a straight forward e-commerce page. A white background with only one image
and simple links.
This is just for fun and yet everything about the site is clean, simple to navigate, easy on the eye and sensible use of java script/flash.