The Home Page is Waterfront Property
"The result is that designers want to build sites that look great, and developers want to build sites with interesting, original, elegant features" (Krug 126).
The internet is in a continuous battle between art and commerce. The hype culture, as Krug explains, is focused on making promises no matter what they are in order to gain capital, users, partners, and revenue-generating deals to the site. This then lands all on the shoulders of the designers and the programmers to find a happy medium. Krug's chapter 8 basically describes the conflicts between web designers which is a great transition into the discussion, as well as our discussion in class, of usability testing. This will be incredibly helpful in our usability testing that is due the 27th.
We need to convey the big picture on the homepage so that the main subject/topic of the site is clearly stated. Krug explains that "the
Home page is the waterfront property of the Web: It's the most
desirable real estate, and there's very limited supply. Everybody who
has a stake in the site wants a promo or a link to their section...and
the turf battles for Home page visibility can be fierce." (97)
A typical user will normally scroll/scan down the page until they find an interesting link, this link should be relevant to the idea of the sites focus. If something is unclear to the user, it might be possible that the user will misinterpret something and/or get frustrated.
Basically, it is as easy as this: "Don't get me wrong: Everything else is important. You do need to impress me, entice me, direct me, and expose me to your deals" (Krug 99). But in order to accomplish all of these, we need to create a clear homepage to get the message across whether it is through a welcome blurb or a tagline, the idea needs to be AVAILABLE.
I like that you made the connection between what was presented in the book and what we discussed in class. Web designers must have quite a bit of conflict between them as to what is helpful for users or not. Our usability testing proves whether the designers' choice was the right one.
It's good that you stress that the information needs to be AVAILABLE. I agree because I get frustrated when it takes more than a minute to figure out the general idea of a website, especially when I can't find it on the home page!
That is all it is about when it comes to websites, AVAILABILITY.
Like you said, Anne, you become frustrated when you have to wait longer than you would like to. This happens because the information you want or need is unavailable and is too complicated to find.