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The 50 Best Websites of 2011

time.com

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Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011

#52

Post by pbhjpbhj »

corin_ wrote: post #49
ck2 wrote: post #46

Congrats to DDG but wow Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection. Where am I currently in that list? Where is the entire list? How do I start over? Go to the end? Why does it do full page reloads for every click?

Then you haven't seen many list features on major publications' websites. Not that there are many worse, just that this system is extremely common. There is a tiny bit of logic behind the thinking that some users prefer lists this way (the less techy you are, the more likely you're not a particularly quick browser, so these don't slow you down much, and having them on seperate pages cuts it into bitesize chunks), but…

>>Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection //

It's pretty bad, I looked and saw "lists" at the bottom of the page but sadly it didn't link through to a list just the same page instead.

>page views equal banner impressions //

I wonder how this affects the sites ability to retain people, they're offering so many off-site links, every tiny bit of content has this big chunk next to it saying "please leave the site". For those that do make it through would any of them actually have been less likely to click through with less advertising on the pages?

What I'm saying is that it certainly is going to increase impressions but at what benefit to the advertiser and with what cost to the content host ...

Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011

#53

Post by revorad »

masklinn wrote: post #30
dotcoma wrote: post #18

How many of you are using it as your default search engine? I am. I don't think it's as good as Google, but I think it's good enough, some things are useful, like the quick links, and at least the user interface is cleaner, there is no stupid auto-complete etc.

I do for now, but its match failures (especially on computers-related stuff) is making me consider switching back to google more every day. Match results really are much lower quality than on google. > there is no stupid auto-complete That's really something I don't care about, since I never search directly from the site, always from my browser.

When DDG fails, use !g followed by your query. It takes you straight to the Google results. Decent compromise while you wait for DDG to improve in certain areas (and it is improving).

Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011

#54

Post by corin_ »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #52
corin_ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you haven't seen many list features on major publications' websites. Not that there are many worse, just that this system is extremely common. There is a tiny bit of logic behind the thinking that some users prefer lists this way (the less techy you are, the more likely you're not a particularly quick browser, so these don't slow you down much, and having them on seperate pages cuts it into bitesize chunks), but…

>> Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection // It's pretty bad, I looked and saw "lists" at the bottom of the page but sadly it didn't link through to a list just the same page instead. > page views equal banner impressions // I wonder how this affects the sites ability to retain people, they're offering so many off-site links, every tiny bit of content has this big chunk next to it saying "pleas…

In my experience, from a short-term business point of view (read: how most people think), you're looking for the balance that stops just short of being such bad UI that people actually decide not to use it; but getting almost that bad is just fine, if it drives up banner impressions.

Personally I prefer to stay clear of anything that's actually annoying to users; I mean annoying as in genuinely annoying, rather than just "people will complain". For example, road block adverts (like when an entire page is taken over with an advert saying "your content will load in x seconds") are genuinely annoying, a sponsored site skin is (unless it's implemented/designed badly) not, because while people might see it and mutter to themselves, it doesn't actually harm their use of the site at all, and it's not nearly annoying enough to make them leave the site.

Interestingly, on one of my company's websites (our entire business is based around advertising), we had discussed the possibility of doing things like this and decided against it, on the logic that even though we wouldn't directly drive away users, in the long run it might contribute to their not liking the site as much. However after various pieces of user feedback, we ended up doing just this for galleries that our journalists take at events, now each image loads a new page cleanly, (giving new banner impressions), and feedback since we made that change has matched the suggestions we had beforehand: our readers actually prefer it.

Re: The 50 Best Websites of 2011

#57

Post by masklinn »

revorad wrote: post #53
masklinn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do for now, but its match failures (especially on computers-related stuff) is making me consider switching back to google more every day. Match results really are much lower quality than on google. > there is no stupid auto-complete That's really something I don't care about, since I never search directly from the site, always from my browser.

When DDG fails, use !g followed by your query. It takes you straight to the Google results. Decent compromise while you wait for DDG to improve in certain areas (and it is improving).

> Decent compromise while you wait for DDG to improve in certain areas (and it is improving).

Since it mostly uses Y!S's results, which tend to suck compared to google's (for my searches anyway), I'm not sure it can improve much in that area, which is by far the one that pains me the most.

And if I'm going to use google 9 times out of 10, I can just remove the indirection.

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