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Designing a web application, how do you design the main page? By this I mean the page that is displayed to a user after entering the base url, like http://www.foo.com.
It would probably depend on a website, but...
stackoverflow welcomes us with list of questions, no silly what is stackoverflow landing page,
last.fm prestens a kind of dashboard, being very popular lately, kind of personalized landing page for registered users
google welcomes us with a search box, but iGoogle i completly diffrent story - looks diffrent for everyone (well, and that's the point actually).
The other thing is, if the user is logged in (provided the website supports logging in), should we present him a diffrent content there then some new, random incomer? And I don't mean some personalized content, but something completly diffrent, like his user profile instead of main page?
From one perspective it could be good - registered users usually know our site, and get a kind of special greeting as soon as they come back. On the other hand, this could cause problems - when I show a website to a friend, then he goes there from his computer and sees something totally diffrent.
And other thing is, when I show a http://www.foo.com to a friend, and it takes me directly to my user profile / dashboard - this isn't sometimes what I'd like to show everyone, as this might show some of my personal data, etc.
What do you do when you design your web applications? What's, in your opinion, best from user's point of view, do my concerns about the website looking diffrent for registered and unregistered users do or don't make any sense? (Again, I don't mean small diffrences, like hiding huge register now link - but showing completly diffrent view then).
It really depends on the focus of your application, but if you were to generalise I would say determine the one or two most critical paths in your application and focus on those.
Registration is probably what you
want to drive more than anything
else, so make it clear how users can
sign up and get involved.
Make it is easy for existing users to sign in.
Consider the amount of text you have
on your front page and reduce and
pair it down as much as possible. Keep the messages and information you
convey here as succinct as possible.
Provide some content immediately
showing what your application or site
provides. Don't make users follow a
link to access the core functionality
of your site immediately e.g. if
you're building an auction site,
ensure there are listings on the
front page.
Consider your audience. If your site is non-technical, the fewer UI elements you present the better. Portal like sites, with lots of compartmentalised functionality and information can be confusing and overwhelming for many non-technical users.
Make it clear how users can get Help if they require it
Without knowing the business area of your site then it's going to be tricky to answer this, but...
You should get the user into the main flow of your website as soon as possible, and the home page is the best place to do this.
If you're an online store, start showing your products.
If you're a search engine, give the user the ability to search.
If you're a blog/news site, show the user the latest news.
Yes - make the experience for a logged on/registered user better (show them THEIR news, show them their recommended products etc), but the purpose of your site should be obvious and accessible from that home page. Get your existing users into their flow as soon as possible, and attact new users in to your site by showing them the meat of your site.
There are plenty of places out there that discuss good web design, making your site "sticky" etc. Check out SmashingMagazine.com (it's one such site) but there are plenty of others.
Oh, and remember that there's one very important user of your home page that you need to accomodate - search engines. Make their life easy, make the content discoverable and indexable, and drive people to your site via Search.
What I've found works best for me is to "role-play" the end-user's experience.
When they initially hit your site, what do they most want to see, or in other words, what are they most likely to be looking for and wanting to do?
I work on many intranet websites for a very large company, and what I've learned is that a home page that has detailed information of the site and what it does is useless and, consequently, my end-users just skip over it in order to get to the pages that they really need. So, my strategy usually consists in a home page that allows them to get straight down to business and whatever they're there to do.
BUT, that's just for the sites that I create. I think it totally depends on your target market and what they're wanting to do.
For the most part, a visitor landing on your page will already know the gist of what your application is about, so there shouldn't be a need to explain in detail what is is you do. Instead, show them that you have the information they are looking for. Screenshots and screencasts are becoming popular these days as a means of getting this across to the short-attention-spanned user.
For registered users, I'd recommend taking them directly to the primary application page instead of the homepage (unless the homepage is the primary application page). For many apps this is a Dashboard (Flickr, Basecamp, Campaign Monitor). If your app's main focus is the homepage, you may want to show them a personalized version of that page (think Google vs. iGoogle).
With all this said, it really does depend on what you are building. Every application is different and there's no right way to do it - only conventions that work for most.
I would start by looking at the type of tasks that can be performed inside your web app, what's important? what's important when they are a new user? what's important when they are a repeat user? what's important when they haven't even registered yet.
Although all of these things happen on the the same page, it's likely that you'll need to define different states. e.g. If a user is on the homepage and not logged in, should we prompt them to login and register.
Perhaps also look at Personas so you can figure out exactly who will be using the app and what is relevant to them.
It should be whatever makes sense for the application, and this should be verified by testing the application with a group of expected users.
The main page should provide a first-time user with enough visual and/or written information to understand what the application is about. They should have some idea as to what actions they can take to interact with the app and what the outcomes of these actions could be.
I know people hate this answer on stackoverflow but there's only one way to find out what the most appropriate thing for your users is - you need to brainstorm ideas with potential users or at the very least you ask them.
I'm not suggesting that you do a focus group, or put a flawed poll up (neither of those things work). Rather, I'm suggesting that you go out and talk to people who will potentially be in your target users and do planning games with them (like card sorting) or go out and do some user testing with paper prototyping.
Anything else is guessing.
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I know that <meta name="Description" content="[description here]" /> can be used but I wonder how to make a description like the one in facebook.
Does this description use the <meta> tag as well? Or is there some other secret behind it?
Edit: I code my site by myself (no wordpress and stuff) :)
I believe this is how it happens.
Google primarily displays multi link listings when they feel a query
has a strong chance of being navigational in nature. I think they can
determine that something is navigational in nature based on linkage
data and click streams. If the domain is well aligned with the term
that could be another signal to consider.
If you have 10,000 legit links for a term that nobody else has more
than a few dozen external citations for then odds are pretty good that
your site is the official brand source for that term. I think overall
relevancy as primarily determined by link reputation is the driving
factor for weather or not they post mini site map links near your
domain.
This site ranks for many terms, but for most of them I don't get the
multi link map love. For the exceptionally navigational type terms
(like seobook or seo book) I get multi links.
The mini site maps are query specific. For Aaron Wall I do not get the
mini site map. Most people usually refer to the site by it's domain
name instead of my name.
Google may also include subdomains in their mini sitemaps. In some
cases they will list those subdomains as part of the mini site map and
also list them in the regular search results as additional results.
Michael Nguyen put together a post comparing the mini site maps to
Alexa traffic patterns. I think that the mini site maps may roughly
resemble traffic patterns, but I think the mini links may also be
associated with internal link structure.
For instance, I have a sitewide link to my sales letter page which I
use the word testimonials as the anchor text. Google lists a link to
the sales letter page using the word testimonials.
When I got sued the page referencing the lawsuit got tons and tons of
links from many sources, which not only built up a ton of linkage
data, but also sent tons of traffic to that specific page. That page
was never listed on the Google mini site map, which would indicate
that if they place heavy emphasis on external traffic or external
linkage data either they try to smooth the data out over a significant
period of time and / or they have a heavy emphasis on internal
linkage.
My old site used to also list the monthly archives on the right side
of each page, and the February 2004 category used to be one of the
mini site map links in Google.
You should present the pages you want people to visit the most to
search bots the most often as well. If you can get a few extra links
to some of your most important internal pages and use smart channeling
of internal linkage data then you should be able to help control which
pages Google picks as being the most appropriate matches for your mini
site map.
Sometimes exceptionally popular sites will get mini site map
navigational links for broad queries. SEO Chat had them for the term
SEO, but after they ticked off some of their lead moderators they
stopped being as active and stopped getting referenced as much. The
navigational links may ebb and flow like that on broad generic
queries. For your official brand term it may make sense to try to get
them, but for broad generic untargeted terms in competitive markets
the amount of effort necessary to try to get them will likely exceed
the opportunity cost for most webmasters.
Source.
Hope this helps.
It depends on the website popularity.
Google does it, you don't.
Google may do it but you can persuade them.And check this out sub sitelinks in google search result
For starters, be sure you have a “sitemap.xml” file. This is a file
that tells the search engine about the pages on your site and makes
it easier for its spiders to crawl and understand it. Your
webmaster or website provider or Content Management System (like
WordPress) should have handled this for you, but it’s worth
checking. If you’re not a master of website technical stuff,
whoever is your technical support person will be able to tell you if
that page is there, and properly set up.
You should register your site with Google Webmaster Tools, if you
haven’t already. The exact process changes from time to time, but
basically, you’ll give Google the URL of your Sitemap file, which
you’ll have from the previous step. You’ll have to put a “Site
Verification Code” on your site to prove to them that you own the
site, and there are a few other simple steps.
Whenever you link one page to another in your site, use anchor text
and alt text that’s descriptive, and as succinct as possible, and
consistent. For example, you’ve linked to your “concierge services”
page from another page using the anchor text “concierge services.”
That’s perfect. Now, don’t link from another page using “guest
services.” You don’t want to be confusing the poor Google spider,
after all.
Where I work, we use a multitude of various services such as Confluence, JIRA, Bamboo, Mercurial, and various others, that all have a web interface that our engineers can access through the corporate intranet.
However, many in our staff aren't directly network wizzes and having these services spread out confuses them. What I want to do is to set up a central server from which they can branch out and find all other web interfaces that relate to their work.
The first thought i had was to create a light web page with frames, using a top bar where the user can quick-navigate to any of the services available - but this creates an additional problem where i can't email someone a direct link to a page within a service, because it will remove that frame (and confusion will arise again when they see there's no way to navigate by clicks).
Is there some best practice to put this all together? Some hints? ideas?
First, stay far far away from frames. They annoy users something fierce (partially because of that not-able-to-bookmark issue you just spoke of.)
You could create a small webpage that could load within a popup window, which contained dropdown-nav links to all of the various tools. If you had the resources, you could even make it so that users could customize this window - so that they can add bookmarks to the tools they use the most.
But that does bring up the question...I'm guessing your staff isn't savvy enough users to know how to use bookmarks? Or keep going to a central link-repository page? Whatever solution you're thinking of, get input from a sampling of your user base, and find out how they'd actually prefer to work. They're the ones who are going to be using the tools, after all. Keep them involved, solicit their input, do "hallway usability tests" or any tool you end up building might be as useful as a chocolate teapot.
I'm thinking of using a tree view for page navigation in my web application, similar to Windows Explorer. There are a lot of things for administrators to configure in the application so I figured listing all links in a single page in tree form would keep things organized. Related page links are grouped in a "folder", and all folders will show closed initially.
Obviously, this page is for administrators only, so they'd be provided with some training. That being said, is this a good design from user's point of view? Do you see any usability or potential implementation issues?
The best answer involves empirical evidence. A yes or no answer could really vary based on the specific task and your intended audience. Try doing a simple 5 minute usability test with your users. Draw out your page layouts on paper and have a couple of users pretend to use the site (see Paper Protyping). Give them a few simple tasks to complete using your interface and observe what they do.
If they get confused or have trouble with the concept, then it's probably best to find another way to provide navigation.
It totally depends on how your users are using your site. If they're often jumping from one part of the site to a completely different, unrelated place in the site, a tree may be the best way to let them quickly find that "other page" they were looking for.
However, for the vast majority of websites I've ever seen or used, I'd prefer to find what I'm looking for either via Search functionality, or by links on the page I'm looking at that lead me to related data.
I'm looking at things that can distinguish a blog from a normal website. These are things that a program needs to be able identify from the html of a website or particular features that a site supports. For eg. pings. The same for news websites.
I'm working on a blog/news monitor program and it will index sites to automatically determine if it is a blog or a news site and then monitor user feedback in comments etc on posts from sites that it determines to be of a blog or news nature.
So what i'm really after is suggestions on what i can use or look out for in identifying these sites.
It's going to be a desktop app written in java so if you have any code specifics in java that'll be great.
thanks in advance
You can search the page for the word "blog", as this will probably be present. Specifically, you can look for it in parts of the HTML page, or exclude parts - like links. This will give you a decent starting point.
Ultimately, though, this is something that will have to be done manually. You should construct an interface for people to specify if it's a blog or news site, or different features of it, when the site is submitted. Then you should create a database of sites and features, and flag them so that you or another administrator can review them and make changes. Once you do this for a site, you'll never need to do it again, so for example http://*.wordpress.com/ is all going to be blogs.
Some features you can automatically detect or get a pretty good chance of detecting, but ultimately you will need a manual review.
Look for a discoverable RSS or Atom feed, which should be present on a blog or serially-updated news site.
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How often do we see stuff like "Send this page to a friend" on a webpages? Well, I see them quite often.
My question is, how do you guys see it's effectiveness? If I hit a webpage that's interesting, and I think my friend would enjoy it, I can just copy the URL from my browser bar, paste it into the email and press "Send" button. In my opinion, it's usually faster and less mistake-aware then the button/link like this on the webpage. In addition, I'm not really sure what this website does with the emails I enter there - don't they store it and then sell for $1/100 addresses to spammers?
My question is - when you design a website, do you put such links on the pages (it's often seen on sites with some news/articles)? Does it even make sense?
My mom has no idea how to send a URL in email or IM, but she does use "send it to a freind" buttons quite often.
The tell-a-friend button has a number of uses that are not so obvious.
From the users perspective:
A tell a friend button will remind a user to tell a friend when they may not have thought of it themselves, which increases referrals. As part of the page, it's much more noticeable.
It also removes technical questions like knowing how to paste or email the link, having their local email set up properly, being on their own computer with email access, etc.
From the webmaster perspective:
Some sites just send the email. Others can do a lot more some legal and ethical, some not so much.
For the owner of the website, since the referrals go through their server, it allows (if they so choose) referrals to be tracked. They can see what pages are being sent, how often, and which are most popular.
They might also track other info, which lets them run contests, potentially see what people are saying about their pages, etc.
They may track email addresses, which could give them marketing data - for instance if they see that a lot of people are sharing that have addresses at aol.com, they may decide to advertise more with aol.
Referrals can also be incentivised, contests run, etc.
No I don't personally put that on my pages, but for less tech savvy users I imagine this button would help a lot. A lot of people don't make the correlation between the URL in the address bar and the page they are viewing. I know my mother didn't for years.
I put it in there as clients request, I also distribute a free module that does "Tell-A-Friend" functionality for DotnetNuke installations, it is quite popular.
As others have pointed out it really depends on the target audience, more tech savvy users are just going to copy and paste, the less tech savvy are going to find much more practical use of a "tell-a-friend" style module.
I've used those buttons for when I'm not sure which bits of a long URL are part of the bare minimum needed for my friend to get to the page and which bits are data related to my session on the site.
Having said that, when I've used them I've sent them to myself, and copied and pasted the URL from the email I've received!
As others have noted, non-technical people may not understand what the URL is, but a 'Send this to a friend' button is easily understood by all.
Tell-A-Friend type functions also offer a chance to capture traffic stats you might otherwise miss. If you rely totally on people copy-and-pasting the URLs into email, you have no good way to tell how often this happens. If you build a form that sends the message(s) you can count how many people sent how many messages.
Like any web traffic metric this one is flawed, but it can give you an order of magnitude for this behavior, and a way to compare how two different pieces of content of being received.