Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/design_priorities.html


The article "Growing a Business Website:Fix the Basics First" was full of great ideas and insight. I enjoyed how Jakob Nielsen just highlighted some of the biggest problems and explained why these were web design problems. This article was written for the new wave of web developers. It seems like web designers got caught in a trend of trying to do to much for the websites own good. Jakob explained that we need to return to basics. My favorite part of the article was when he listed the biggest flaws to web design which were:
* Communicating clearly so that users understand you. Users allocate minimal time to initial website visits, so you must quickly convince them that the site's worthwhile.
* Providing information users want. Users must be able to easily determine whether your services meet their needs and why they should do business with you.
* Offering simple, consistent page design, clear navigation, and an information architecture that puts things where users expect to find them.
It is so important to remember that we as web developers are the abnormal users of the internet. I can go to almost any site and it doesn't matter wither it has a good layout or not i can figure out where to go. This is because i spend a large portion of my day online and I also am an experienced web user. However, the average user needs to be able to interpret the information easily. We need to give the users what they are looking for and make the experience enjoyable and not just usable.