Comments on: How attractive is your website?

By: Swaroop

Swaroop — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:52:51 +0000

@Gopinath The first thought that came to my mind on visiting your website was that there is not enough visual emphasis on the main content, there needs to be some kind of separation of parts

@Ranjan There are no real metrics for content.

One possible approach is to check your referrer logs and see if the searches that are leading to your website are the right kind of searches that you expect. For example, if you are writing about personal finance, are searches for, example, “personal finance howto india” leading to your website?

Another approach is using websites such as Website Grader.

Of course, the best approach would still be getting lot of feedback from readers and other people discussing what you have written.

By: Ranjan

Ranjan — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:08:54 +0000

Happy to discover your blog.

I would like more info on usability experience and its measurement. I am a newbie and hv done my Joomla site without knowing a bit of coding.

Even for the content, r there some metrics? I mean how do I decide that my content is fair/satisfactory/good/excellent? (Btw, if these r dumb questions, blame it on my newbieness!!)

By: Gopinath Mavinkurve

Gopinath Mavinkurve — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:21:22 +0000

Aesthetics of a webpage should match the content. For a subject like art, photography and such subjects, it is important to make a style statement with your web design. In fact, the style should be aligned to the subject matter. It would not be appealing to have a jazzy webpage only to blast your politicians and write about current affairs.

My blog is a humor blog. Do visit and let me know if it is "attractive".

By: Swaroop

Swaroop — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:30:46 +0000

@Manish Well said. You're right, usability and aesthetics are two different things.

Regarding IRCTC, yes, it's true that it's a monopoly (although I heard that it won't be for long) on online ticketing, but we still do use the website because it is useful.

@Sridhar I disagree:

First impressions matter.
A significant number of readers visit the website every N days to read rather than using a feed reader (they don't know what that is, apparently).
The 90% is going to change in the coming months.

@Arky The focus this time was to spotlight the content.

By: Paul-Sebastian

Paul-Sebastian — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:31:26 +0000

Great point!

By: Arky

Arky — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:55:59 +0000

Swaroop, the design needs of blog is quite different other from other websites ,, a lot thought have to be given to your target segment in case of technical blogs I guess the quicker they can summerize the gist of the post the better.

I tend to follow the traditional approach mentioned in one of the HCI research paper published years ago, shall see if I can dig it up for you.

By: Sridhar

Sridhar — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:24:30 +0000

IMHO websites design shouldn’t matter for a blog like yours (well I know there is other stuff too here.. but blog makes 90% of it). Most users will check your website once and then subscribe to the rss feed.
Design is an issue for websites like digg/craigslist/gmail where some sort of interaction is required.

By: Manish Jethani

Manish Jethani — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:07:23 +0000

Too often usability and aesthetics are clubbed together, when in fact they’re two entirely different things. Google is the best example of this: I don’t think any of their stuff is aesthetically appealing — their search page in particular is as plain as one can be — but they score very high on usability in almost every product they make (take Google Talk, Google Reader, even Google Maps). You can use eye candy to cover up for poor usability, but it’s not going to fly for too long.

Regarding IRCTC, isn’t it true that they’re a monopoly? If you’re a monopoly you can get dish out any kind of crap to your users.