What Makes A Good Website?

12 Pages 2911 Words

What makes a good website?
Introduction

In my opinion what makes a good web page? I have been on the net for the last, can’t really believe it, coming to ten years now. From conception to now, I have been a regular surfer on the web, visiting thousands of pages a month, mostly in search of some thing or another. Most searches have lead to even more searches but some times I come up tops. Having been used to the all text sites of the beginning, and seeing the first implementations of more graphic based sites, there was a three-year lapse where I rarely got to surfing and missed a whole evolution in web page. When I returned in full to surfing, I discovered the face of the internet have started to change. Buttons with pictures, navigation systems, some that even worked, all and all better thought out sites that where pleasing to look at and better to work with. This was probably due to the introduction of java script and more complex versions of html. Before then what made a sight good or bad, for me, was more based on contents. As this change came to be my expectations of sites changed as well. When, at first, we where happy to have hyperlinked, underlined blue text, now we expect to have a good, easy to use, constant navigation system. Where bad resolution bitmaps where the norm, now we want smooth animated graphics. The way we use the internet have changed with the advances in technology, so changing our expectations and creating a whole new set of problems for anyone, from the big spenders to backroom designers, how to get our attention and how to keep us coming back.

First impressions:

The first thing that I look for in a web site is definitely something to draw my attention. I am not picky, but it normally comes in the style of some sort of graphic. Will it be the company logo, background image, or even just the colour used in the background, any of them can make me take a second look and so giving the designer a...