Jour 3340
Navigating Through the Waters of Good vs. Bad Websites
Sept. 7, 2009
Navigating through an ill-designed web page is a painstaking process. It is also, among other things, time consuming and let’s face it: Time is money, if not more valuable than the latter. Websites looking to avoid the barren wasteland of futileness, must follow a few practical guidelines. For starters, a website must be EASY to navigate. Society is driven by technology, unfortunately, not everyone is as techonologically savvy as others. That’s why a website that’s easy to navigate goes a long way in driving web traffic for your site.
Another important element of good websites are good search engines. These engines should be designed to handle typos and any other grammar related problems. The information these search engines produce should prioritize information by date, not by relevance (Heidi Pratt’s nose job may get a lot of hits but that doesn’t make it as relevant as say, a tsunami in Honolulu).
Another VERY important element of a good website is its homepage. Let me spell it out for you– A bad homepage equals an uninterested visitor. The homepage is the first page visitors will see (and probably the last if they decide to leave) so it must make a statement.
As I stated from the onset of this article, these are just a few of the many tactics that a website can use to stand above the carnage of bad websites.
As part of this assignment, I was asked to research a website outside the North Texas area. I settled on the Houston Chronicle. My first reaction was, “Wow! This looks more like an entertainment site than a newspaper site,” but that was just a first impression. I decided to do a little navigating and test out the navigational waters of the site via the search engine. I typed in “caterpilar” making sure to misspell the word. The search engine caught the typo and corrected it. I then typed in “Dallas” to find how it prioritized information. The information was catagorized by date. So far, so good.
At the top of each page there are tabs for the different sections of the paper. Clicking on “Travel” I was directed to the section for all things travel. The first thing that caught my eye about this particular page was the large, vibrant picture of two girls holding a monkey in the Dominican Republic. I am a firm believer in the power of pictures and this picture piqued my curiosity thereby serving its purpose: it caught my attention. Scrolling down the page I noticed five ads placed in direct succession to the right of the page. Four of the five ads were directly related to travel while the fifth was a 15 percent off Macy’s advertisement for Labor’s Day. I guess people who travel need to shop too…
By the end of my excursion on the travel page, I mosied my way back to the top of the page to click on the “Home” tab. I was instantly directed back to the homepage where I did further investigating. As I scrolled down the page, I noticed an abundance of information- a little too much in fact. Readers can become overwhelmed when there is too much information. Thankfully, the paper had sectioned out in bold subheads the different genres (aka sports, life, business etc). Ads for the homepage were also minimal and unobtrusive in comparison to the rest of the material on the page. One thing that I didn’t like was in how far down I had to scroll to get certain information, particularly the placement of the boxes for the “Most Commented Stories,” and “Most Read Stories.” I think if those two boxes were pulled to the top right of the homepage there would be more web traffic.
Last, but not least, I will mention the stories at the top of the homepage. I noticed that the only stories to have pictures associated with them did not pertain to the Houston area. One story was about Facebook, another was about the Duggar’s 19th child, and the third was about the Astros. Below these three pictures were the stories pertaining to the Houston area (with no pictures, I might add). The website needs to do more for its local stories in pictures as it does for its entertainment stories.
While the Houston Chronicle may not be teetering on the edge of becoming an ill-navigated website, it could use some improvements.
