Facebook vs. Twitter

Site design is an important part of any success on the internet. It's extremely easy to have an un-appealing site that does not follow the ten principles of web design. This can also be easily avoided. Let's use Facebook as an example. For anyone visiting the site for the first time it's evident as soon as the page opens what the purpose of the site is. Clearly stated, "Facebook helps you connect and share with people in your life." These are almost the first words you see, and leaves you confident that is what your going to get out of the site. This allows the user to not even have to think, which is the number one principle of web design. The sign up details are also found without navigating anywhere, aswell as login info. On one page without navigating anywhere you can login, sign up and quickly see the point of the site. This is very useful and effective.

To look at the opposite side of the spectrum let's look over at twitter's home page. The first thing that takes my eye's attention is the side scrolling text, that upon further reading has nothing to do with knowing what the site does but is just a bunch of names. It is a very poor decision making the least relevant piece of information on the page moving, because this is where the eye will travel first. I am still not even one hundred percent positive on twitter's purpose and I've been looking at their homepage for a while now. The sign in, or sign up info is found after navigating a little through the site and this can cause some users to loose patience and leave the site. This refers to the second principle of web design, don't waste your users patience. Seeing a cycling list of top tweets definitely drains my patience, and also confuses me; what the hell is a tweet. A better idea would be to leave these "top tweets" or who else is on twitter to bee shown later after you login, because this information is redundant to someone who has yet to sign up. All of these problems could have been solved before they even became an issue. Keeping conscious of the purpose of your site throughout your design process is crucial to success on the web. People like things to be convenient and easy, not tedious and difficult.