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This Week's Quote
Don't let what you can't do,
stop you from doing what you can
do.
- Frank Ferrell
From the book, Trevor's Place:
The Story of the Boy Who Brings
Hope to the Homeless
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This Week's Glossary Pick
CLIENT
A
computer program generally installed on a
user's computer requesting a service from a
particular server, usually over the Internet
or on a local area network. A good example
of a well used client program is Microsoft's
Outlook Express. |
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 Show
Me The Banana
In his book, "The Big Red Fez, How to Make
Any Web Site Better", Seth Godin puts a lot
of emphasis on the need to keep the web
design clean, organized, focused and simple
to use. Think about what your
objective is for a single page. Do you
want to invite people to sign up for a
newsletter, or take advantage of an
introductory offer? Should your
visitor click on a headline or a banner?
Remember that you have to design the page
that works for your visitor rather than
yourself, and that can often require some
selfdiscipline in holding back on adding all
kinds of fancy gadgets, imagery, complicated
navigation and so on just for the sake of
adding them. To bring home his
message, Godin uses an analogy of a monkey
and a banana. If the monkey can't
quickly and easily find the banana in one
tree, he's off to the next. Godin
points out that you've got to first realize
what the banana is (that's your objective,
what you want the web visitor to do) and
then place that banana where it can be seen
quickly and effortlessly.
A different banana is a different goal, and
so you should place the different banana in
another tree, or of course, a separate web
page.
Whether they knew it or not, the founders of
Google seemed to understand the importance
of this rule. Google's landing page
was so clean and simple, and obvious.
Google wanted the visitor to execute a
search. They wanted you to use their
search engine. Once you trusted and
depended on Google, you came to make use of
the revenue generating products Google had
embedded in each type of search. Other
search engines welcomed you with a very
complex home page. Did they want you
to run a search, click on a news headline,
or a banner?
YouTube has managed to keep its on line
process for uploading videos as easy as
possible, and that made for a great comfort
factor for its users which now number in
multimillions.
Make sure your web visitors are comfortable
and welcome when they arrive. Consider
what it is you want your visitor to do and
design the page from the visitor's point of
view. Show them the banana! |
