Website Spider and Visitor Usability (Page 1 of 4 ) In this article we are going to discuss spider and visitor website usability issues. Luckily for us, both search engine spiders and human visitors have similar preferences, and are quite easy to satisfy. Before we get deeply into what you should be doing, though, let’s start with some examples of what you shouldn't be doing. Bad Examples of Usability The examples below are from 2008. I've never been to web design school, but from the examples below I get the feeling that universities and colleges are not doing their jobs. The sites below were either done by amateurs or web designers who picked the wrong profession. Go to those sites and try getting ANYWHERE. It's a hassle. Keep mental notes and make sure you AVOID those crimes against usability. http://www.torchia.com/ - Their motto is "A direct line to functional design." That's quite ironic. The company does architecture, and I'm sure they do a good job, but once I got to their site, the question that popped into my head was - WTF? Not only is their navigation practically unusable, they use flash, which is bad for search engine spiders. http://www.wherever.com/ - Another great example of what NOT to do, and strangely, another architecture site. I'll be surprised if they paid some designer for this. The company wanted to be "classy" and cute, but they bombed any chances online as a result. They also use flash. When you first load the site, all you see is one word, "Medium," from which you're supposed to figure out that hovering over it will bring up minimalist navigation. Are they trying to hide something? http://www.havenworks.com/ - My eyes started to hurt after 0.5 seconds on that site. The colors are way too bright and there's way too much clutter. In general their site would be pretty usable if they cleaned up their color schemes and worked on fonts and backgrounds. There's a lesson to learn from this site: keep your colors conservative. http://www.jerde.com/ - This site is pretty easy to get used to if you're a savvy person who spends a lot of time on the web. The problem with it is that it's format is so radically different from basic usability standards that an average non-savvy user will have a very hard time figuring it out. The ultimate verdict is the "back button." Lesson - keep basic usability standards in mind. There are no rules in web design, but there are formats recognized by everyone. No surprise here, this site also uses flash. http://www.alternativetransportservices.co.uk/ - This one gets a big LOL. Check out their opening paragraph "Get up offa that thing and feel FUNKY...its the sexy cheap van hire and removal taxi man machine now !! for moVing it and grooVing it... ShaKe that moNey BABY!! The way you would like it, is the way it is CAN YOU FEEL GOOD?? FOR INFO CALL THE CHEAP NATIONAL VAN TRANSPORT FLEEL GOOD HOT LINE TODAY on 01554 81 11 11.
HUH? Dude... what are you talking about? Let's not judge that company; maybe this is their approach to being different. The lesson here is, use proper English when speaking to your readers; if they can't read your site, they can't use it. Also keep in mind that search engines have spell checkers in them, and if they see some really weird words all around your site, they will consider them to be spelling mistakes. Still, I have to give credit to those guys, since whoever is in charge of that site is obviously enjoying it, and that's something worth learning from them.
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