Comments on: Know what bugs me about your website?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:19:39 +0000

PREACH IT. I agree! I tend to gravitate toward sites that are very clean and uncluttered… it could be that that is what I’m pursuing in my own life.

By: Jeremy Bell

Jeremy Bell — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:12:31 +0000

There are website gurus that do studies and they have found that new potential “customers” will only stay on your site for a few seconds waiting on it to load before they move onto the next. If your site takes 20 or 30 seconds to load you have already lost a lot of people. Not everyone has the fastest computers or fastest internet connections and that has to be compensated for. There are nice, tasteful ways to build a site that is professional that doesn’t have a lot of junk on it.

Here is another thing that maybe you guys can speak to. Again having a college level computer based degree, another thing we discussed is busyness and poor layout. There are some sites that will remain nameless, that when you bring them up your eyes don’t know where to go. You are automatically hit with information overload. That is just as much a turn off to me as the immediate music and flash. If it is not streamlined and not well organized, I probably will not hang around for long. I dont want to stay there for an eternity looking for something that I need. I will go somewhere else and find it.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:24:08 +0000

That’s some good stuff Chris. I heard today that Amazon has spent millions of dollars researching how many seconds they have before losing a sale… my friend told me that even a 3rd of a second mattered..

It’s important because statistically, you have less than 10 seconds to tell what you are about and what you would like them to do…

… and they spend 5-6 seconds watching it load!

By: Susan Unthank

Susan Unthank — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:13:54 +0000

In my experience the appeal of the flash comes from the site owner, not the site user. The site owner likes the appeal of the ooh and ahh and thinks they are cutting edge, while the user is frustrated by the limitations of the flash.
Now mobile, I believe, is the wave of the future and should be the biggest concern for the owners.

By: Kimberly Allen

Kimberly Allen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:40:10 +0000

Yes… Flash can be used in a way that becomes obnoxious as well as borderline tasteless. I believe the ooh and awe factor have a lot to do with the appeal of it for the general public (with hi-speed connections). However, as a web designer seeking both the need to create that experience with the flash and make a site that is retrievable and navigable in multiple platforms, implementing static, dynamic and mobile site viewing options in the future are going to become necessities should the consumer desire the effect.

By: Chris Dover

Chris Dover — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:29:51 +0000

I do not design websites but I would think that if your point in designing a site is communication that you would want to pare down everything that you want people to know about your group so that it is simple. I hate going to website where you have to wait for everything to load before the page will scroll. I have a decent computer with a decent processor. If I have to sit looking at a screen that says “loading” for more than a few seconds when I visit the site the content had better be incredible. People tend to make initial value judgements about the quality of items or websites or people within seconds after their first sensory introduction to them. If that first few seconds of visiting a group’s website is spent looking at a screen that says “Please Wait” or “Loading” their judgement is likely to be that the site and the group it is communicating about is slow and clunky. As the old saying goes, “You only get one chance to make a first impression.”

I also hate sites that will not work unless you have the very newest plug-in from flash or some other codec. Or, if you are using an older computer (Win 98 or XP) and the site will not load at all. Build sites that will run on any computer built in the last 10 years at least.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:46:56 +0000

I found this cool website that would pull up what your website looked like in ANCIENT years (3 web years ago..lol)
Vinerecordsonline.com ’s original site was ALL flash… it wouldn’t pull it up… just a big ol black page with the little (…loading) thing… kinda sad. I would have like to have seen it.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:44:45 +0000

clean is the new flashy, huh… like twitter

By: Chris Unthank

Chris Unthank — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:26:10 +0000

Kimberly – as a web designer you know. It sometimes just gets way out of hand…

By: Chris Unthank

Chris Unthank — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:24:27 +0000

I’m under the belief that a little goes a long way. I’m in no way against flash – I think it does LOOK great – but like my mom said – load time, lost content, etc. really takes away from a site, IMHO.
I find through my own experiences that usually the only people that like as much flash as some sites have are the owners themselves. Most surfers don’t care as long as the site looks clean and contains the information they are seeking. (Why do you think Wikipedia is so popular?)