I’m currently in the process of updating my site design and rather impatiently decided to put it live even though its not quite finished. This does mean section of the site aren’t going to be styled properly, especially the blog as it hacks into my main site for resources and CSS styles.
Please bear with me while I get it all sorted.
Thanks.
As more and more people start browsing on their mobiles, ensuring our sites work ok on small screens is going to become more important. Here are a few emulators you can use to test your websites look and work ok.
Google are playing with a new website design for a select number of thier ‘.com’ visitors today, not too much has changed and they are keeping with the minimalist look, but have changed a few colours and replaced the default browser buttons for some nice blue images.
The biggest change comes on the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages) where the navigation has moved from the top of the results to a left hand column
New Google SERP Design
Iif you cant wait for it to be rolled out worldwide, you can get a sneak peak by following these steps
1) log out of your Google account if currently logged in
2) goto http://google.com/ncr
3) type the following javascript into your address bar to add a cookie to your browser
javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com"); alert('cookie added');
4) reload the page and you should see the new design…
Googles Nov 09 Redesign
UPDATE:
if you would like to remove the cookie from your browser, them enter the following into your address bar
javascript:void(document.cookie='PREF=20b6e4c2f44943bb;path=/;domain=.google.com;expires=Sat, 01-Jan-2000 00:00:00 GMT'); alert('cookie removed');
All websites have a sitemap, the well built ones anyway, usually they are on their own dedicated page and are simply a plain text listing of all the pages within a site, see my sitemap as a basic example.
This is a traditional sitemap, one that you will find on most sites across the internet, there is nothing wrong with this and does its job very well, it lists all my pages within the site allowing people or search engine spiders to navigate around and find the content they are looking for.
There is however a new growing trend, well… I say new but it has been around for a while, but more and more sites seem to be using it recently which has resulted in the “modern sitemap” phrase being termed by the web design and developer community. I’m talking about footer sitemaps, instead of having a single page listing all the pages within a site, you have a smaller “related links” sitemap in the footer of every page on a site, a few examples for you;
I can see the benefits of using a sitemap in this way, the first that comes to mind is that you associate the links with some content, search engines can use the content to grab keywords and then serve your links if the keywords are used in a query, this is the big failure of the traditional plain text listing sitemap in terms of SEO, with no content to associate the links to means search engines cant add any weight to the links. Other benefits of this type of sitemap range from providing your visitors a list of related pages they may find useful to simply a way of padding out the footer of your site if you don’t have much content.
As with anything there are downsides to having a sitemap like this, the main one being there isn’t a single point listing all pages within the site, in some cases you may end up overloading a page with links, a big no-no for SEO, not to mention some website designs simply wouldn’t look right with a sitemap in its footer.
I think that while the benifits of having the associated content shouldn’t be ignored, this type of sitemap only works with certain site designs so trying to get a nice balance is what you should aim for, combining the two styles of sitemap to allow your visitors to easily find the content they are looking for. Having a list of all the pages in your site is a valuble tool and allows search engines to index all the pages on your site, having “related links” on a page allows you to show visitors content they may be interested in but wouldnt normally find.
A “modern sitemap” to me is one that users find useful, this could be the traditional sitemap or its younger brother the related links sitemap, the important thing is your visitors can find the content they are looking for.
Over the last couple of days, popular social networking site Facebook has unveiled yet another user interface design, just 6 months since the last big change and once again this drastically changes the way a user interacts with the site.
The new ‘homepage’ has taken a page out of twitters book (someone jumping on the bandwagon maybe??) in the way it works and focuses on what users and their friends are doing right now, from reading the comments on the facebook blog the general consensus is that changing the site to be more like twitter is a bad move and a majority want the old designs back.
This issue raises an important question over user interface design and how regularly we should update our site designs and application interfaces. Changing the way your users move around and use the site should never be taken lightly, people generally don’t like change, we get used to doing something a particular way and don’t like being told to do it a different way. On the other hand we like and enjoy new and exciting looking websites that are easy to use and don’t take us too long to do what we want to do.
The rate that design trends come and go and web technology moves on, mean that we would have to update our sites every few months to keep up and keep new members joining up, but update your site too often and your existing members may get update with the constant changes to the site.
The trick to this delicate balance is to keep your changes small and regular and make sure you let people know before you make the change, spring a big user interface change on people and they will get their backs up (as people on facebook are doing now) but if you release smaller updates and tell your users why your doing it and how it will improve their browsing experience then they are more likely to accept the changes without starting a lynching mob. There will always be those that are resistant to change and threaten to leave and take all their friends with them but if you keep your users in the loop, maybe offer a few beta testers a chance to provide feedback on new designs / interface and you will keep your existing users happy while still bringing in new ones.