Week 11: 3 Points and a Question

First of all, yay Krug. I think he does an excellent job of practicing what he preaches. His concepts are clear, concise, and to the point; he does not make the reader think. Although he accomplishes this, he finds a nice balance of still presenting a lot of useful information.

1) I tried my hand at designing a department's website before. The problem was that another girl and I collaborated on it and it was our first time designing a site and using the software Dreamweaver to do so. Needless to say, the outcome was somewhat disastrous. I think we abused every convention and the site was so cluttered that I'm assuming anyone who visited it probably left it frustrated. Our audience had to think very hard about what was a link, what wasn't a link, what path the should take, and almost every page was overloaded with information that nobody was going to read. I knew it was a failure because we constantly got phone calls from students asking about information that was located on the website, they just couldn't find it. I struggled with the other girl in organizing the site because we both had very different visions, and you could easily see that conflict portrayed in the site.

2) I love how Krug uses Amazon as the quintessential website because it really is a very well constructed site. It uses the classic "L" shaped design and his discussion about the use of tabs makes you wonder why no one else thought of this before. The site is incredibly easy to navigate, and all of the site entities are accessible on every page you navigate because of the tab system. I used to think that it was not the best site because it seemed very plain and unattractive, but aesthetics can easily take a backseat to ease of use.

3) I like his discussion about the number of clicks it takes a user to get where he/she wants to get. I personally find breadcrumbs helpful and like when sites use them because I think it explains a lot about the organizational structure of the site. It is crazy how many clicks you to do to get where you want, but what is more surprising is how easily I'll continue to click if I know it's getting me in the right direction and how easily I'll go to another site if the first click or two takes me nowhere. I think the hierarchical structure of the website is by far the most important aspect because it is what's going to drive the number of user who use it and continually come back to it.

Question: There are some absolutely huge websites out there with hundreds and thousands of pages. How does one easily organize such an overwhelming site so that the navigation is easy for users?