Island and ocean
A website is like an island. The web is like the ocean. Users see ocean most of the time. User are charting this ocean, making their own maps of its features. Sometimes they find land - really good sites they remember and revisit.
The web as a whole v individual websites
Website owners see their website as a logical whole. Users don't - they see the world wide web, and individual webpages from different sites as part of that.
When users begin at a search engine they are sailing mostly uncharted waters. Your island of a website may come into view on the horizon, probably from an unexpected direction.
Users make decisions using nuggets of information
When users begin at a search engine they are working with very small pieces of information about webpages. Because they use these to make judgements on whether to visit a website, the small pieces of information need to be very good. This is one of the biggest challenges for any website.
When users begin at a web address they have expectations for the site and reasons to visit. But they do not have the whole picture, probably don't even want it, and maybe working on old information.
Each webpage needs to show the website's purpose and structure clearly and quickly so that:
- Users can decide if the page is valuable to them.
- Users can find other pages on the site they really want to visit.
Purpose of a website design
The object of a web design is to get users to stop and decide whether or not your content is worth looking at.
A webpage design is like a sweet wrapper, not the main event Sweet v sweet wrapper
Pavement café Many webpage templates don't create enough space for content