and some ideas to fix itWHY YOUR SITE SUCKS
MORE IS NOT BETTER
17 “links”558 links
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Star Tribune NYT WaPo CNN Slate Google News MPR MnIndy Bring.mn
151186199220225
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425427
558
Number of links on homepage
Sites accessed 10 PM, December 7, 2009
Every story needs at least one image
Make it big!Hey look, a rooster!flickr photo by lucanrt
Get rid of flash
(Except for video)
A big flashflickr photo by Gentry's Daguerreian Studio
18 pt13 pt
TYPOGRAPHY:Variation in scale?
34 pt
10 pt
TYPOGRAPHY:Variation in scale!
Web Type Tips
• No more than 2.5 typefaces• Web-safe fonts are ugly• More leading • Have a type repertoire
1. Courier (or similar)2. Arial
3. Agency (or similar)4. Times New Roman
5. Verdana6. Times
7. Helvetica
Big links for big sections
whitespace is nice space
Make search suck less
• Recent content first
• Use faceting
• Highlight search terms
• Auto-complete
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Star Tribune NYT MinnPost Bring.mn MnIndy MPR News Q Google News
Performance:File Requests per page
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NYT Star Tribune MinnPost Bring.mn MnIndy MPR News Q Google News
Performance:Page Size (kb)
HTML Stylesheets JavascriptImages Flash / Other
CLIENT PERFORMANCE:
• Does it scroll ok on an old computer?
• Does it have lots of scripts?
Good Design=
Good Business
Justin Heideman
http://co-opmedia.org
@justinph