Focus on your customers first, not the design
Wednesday July 5, 2006
It's still amazing to me how many Web site designs are clearly built based on what is cool right now. 10 years ago everyone had rainbow colored horizontal rule images. Then came black backgrounds. And now we get the tiny text with drop-down menu navigation. If you're more worried about how your Web site looks than whether it gets the job done, then you're either in Marketing or you're too focused on being cool. Actually, that's not fair to Marketing people, as they generally want the Web site to get the job done too. Don't forget that when you're building a Web site, focusing on the looks won't get you as far as if you focus on your customer.
Comments
I some how disagree with the advise “White space makes sites less usable”. I don’t love some fancy wanna-be-cool designs. BUT I love CLEAN, not crowded web sites, where I can find the information FAST. I mean, being clean leads to find information.
I don’t want to be rude, but this very page in about.com shows how bad design leads to a page that is hard to read. Just see the first advices in your article. They look ugly.
*laugh* I’ll be sure to let the designers know.
I don’t actually design the About site, I just write about how to do Web design for About.