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“Interweb the Rainbow”? The Skittle’s Twitter Feed Site Re-Design

sheena — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:48:29 +0000

Modernista! did it first, but Skittles got the attention.

This week Skittles changed their homepage to a Twitter feed of anyone who tweeted anything with the word ’skittles’ in it and it’s created a lot of buzz. Some people love it, saying its perfect advertising in our struggling economy. Some hate it, more than a few social media types have called it a ‘cheap publicity stunt’ because of Skittles previous non-involvement with any sort of social media. But, ignoring all social media banter and looking at the new skittles page from a web design perspective, we see some potentially serious problems.

First of all, control. Your homepage is usually the #1 place people go when looking for information on your company. Is it really a good idea to essentially give up control of the majority of the content? Skittles has already run into this problem. Once word got out you could get on their homepage by simply typing ’skittles’ somewhere in your tweet more than a few inappropriate links and offensive language popped up.

Usability. The nature of this type of feed (and the sometimes inappropriate things it shows) caused Skittles to put up an age verifying pop-up before entering the site. True, if a person can add or subtract they can trick the program, and the screen is a pop-up so you can see the content behind it anyway, but putting up a barrier to entry like this is a no-no in terms of usability. Many users will simply not spend the time to fill it in and move on. Also, what happens to the people who were genuinely looking for information? They are bound to be more than a little confused on where they should go next or whether they are even on the Skittles site…not good.

The actual site navigation looks too much like a spammy pop-up for comfort. Once you get past that and realize that it is meant to be their site nav the way they’ve labeled things can confuse people further. ‘Chatter’ takes you to the same page you’re already on (’Home’), ‘Friends’ pulls up a Facebook page, and ‘Media’ brings in a Skittles focused feed from YouTube. The only parts of the entire site that still resembles a company website is a contact form and somewhat lame ‘Products’ section with a few links to their parent company, Mars‘ site.

They’ve created buzz and we really do applaud them for attempting to utilize social media to get their brand involved. However, abandoning current web convention all together and sacrificing usability is probably not the smartest move in the long run…guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Creative and Fun Site Navigation

sheena — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:58:53 +0000

Navigation is one of the most important elements of a website design. It provides your users with a road map and guide to your site and gives them a sense of direction. Therefore, well-designed sites tend to have navigation menus and bars that are simple. But as we’ve seen before simple doesn’t have to be boring.

The sites below have succeeded in creating nav menus that are creative and fun, while not confusing (and thus probably losing) their visitors.

Design Jobs on the Wall

5 Common Mistakes Made When Designing a Website

sheena — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:49:17 +0000

There are some pretty bad websites out there. In fact, there are sites dedicated solely to pointing them out (webpagesthatsuck.com). Most of the ‘bad websites’ out there (excluding the truly horrific) are labeled so because they made a handful of very common mistakes during the design process. These are some of those mistakes we see the most often.

Having design elements that look like ads – There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a reasonable amount of advertisements on your website. However, you must realize that because of the sheer volume of advertisements on pages, most users have developed selective attention. They’ll ignore everything that looks like a banner, pop-up or any other type of typical ad – so its not a good idea to have important design elements or information displayed in any of these formats.

Jamming 10 pounds of stuff into a 5 pound bag – Whether you go overboard on content or flashy design elements, cramming too much onto a site is a common mistake. The result could be a busy layout, a wall of text, side scrolling, very little white space, etc. Each of these things makes a website difficult to read and making your visitors work for information is never a good idea.

Having confusing and unclear navigation – Clear navigation is one of the most important factors for a site’s usability. Users should have no questions about how they are supposed to move around the different areas of your site. It’s a good idea to make your links change colors once a user clicks on them, knowing which pages they’ve already visited helps prevent users from unintentionally landing on pages they’ve seen before. Also, your users shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to find the content they are looking for – make sure that every single page is within 3 or 4 clicks of your homepage.

Looking amateur-ish – Sure this is a bit vague, but there are certain features/missteps that web designers make that scream beginner. For example, avoid saying “Welcome to ____” on your homepage. There are other ways to make your visitors feel welcome. Similarly, test to make sure your page looks good in all browsers instead of taking the shortcut “Best viewed in ____”.

Using overly wild or bright color schemes – Everyone loves creativity, and this doesn’t mean that you should shy away from using color in your design. However, when colors are too bright or you use too many colors on the same page it can look unprofessional. Also make sure that your background color and text color compliment each other, keeping your text easy to read and scan.

So next time your designing a site, take a minute to step back and review. If you avoid these common errors you are probably safe from having your site end up on one of the many “Worst Website” lists.