RE: website finally up

Ah, I have NOT used my splash page as the home page, but my index page
which gives a site overview. Perhaps this is a more elegant solution. I
myself would feel extremely tetchy if every time I hit the "home" link
it took me to the splash page. In my own surfing, I tend to avoid pages
that take ages to load (I'm on dialup), those with intrusive music that
(yikes) overlays whatever I'm listening to at the time, and yes, I do
use the home button sometimes but am more likely to use the "back"
browser button as it tends to get you back to a page more quickly (as
far as I can see) than the actual link to the page before.

I had no trouble with Clay's splash page....it seemed obvious to go for
the door.

Kate

-----Original Message-----
From: George L Smyth [mailto:glsmyth@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, 8 September 2005 12:31 a.m.
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
Subject: Re: website finally up

Clay -

It looks like I am in the miniority, but that's okay. As webmaster is
my profession my opinion is that usability is the most important aspect
of a website. After all, you have done all of the hard work to produce
a product then create a website, so it only makes sense to want to make
things as easy as possible for visitors to be able to appreciate what
you ahve done. If you have a dedicated following (let's say you are
Ozzie Ozborne) then you will have people who will have no problems
spending whatever time is necessary to investigate the whole site.
Probably, none of us on this list are in that category, and the typical
visitor to our sites would be someone who is just coming to see what is
there. They need to be taken by the hand and walked around, pointing
out to them the great things you have done. This can always be done in
an "artistic" way.

The most important link on nany page is a link back to the homepage.
During my Web testing at my last job I was surprised to see how many
people, when given a new task, would go back to the homepage and start
from there despite the fact that the obvious solution was to use the
global navigation - and these were people who were already somewhat
knowledgeable about the site. This was an interesting revalation to me.
It also begs the question as to where one should be sent when a splash
page is used, since the splash page is the actual homepage. Do you
require the extra click?

All of this is, of course, just my opinion, and the important thing is
to enjoy putting together your site. As long as you are not involved in
an ecommerce site (I know of none that have a splash page) then have fun
with what you have done - I'm just looking at it from a usability
standpoint.

Cheers -

george

--- Clay <wcharmon@wt.net> wrote:

> Well, thanks for the input everyone. I am definitely going to do some
> tweaks with page size and image sizes/compression etc based on your
> comments. I am still thinking about the whole splash page thing.
> Maybe some text instructing the interested viewer to click on the
> image would be appropriate. The other idea I had was to make a
> mouseover image that makes the door knob glow bright red or
> something. That is a little twee though. I dunno. Most people figured

> it out, I guess.
>
> One other design issue that I debated with myself was whether to keep
> the a 'global' menu on every page once the main part of the site was
> loaded. I personally hate having to hit the back arrow button just to

> get back to where I started.

Handmade Photographic Images - http://www.GLSmyth.com
DRiP Investing - http://DRiPInvesting.org

        
                
______________________________________________________
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/

-- 
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.19/92 - Release Date:
7/09/2005
 
-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.19/92 - Release Date:
7/09/2005