W3C homepage

Home page:
Navigation is poorly defined and displayed as text links on the
website. The links are not highlighted or separated with kind of
graphics or even colour separation.

Furthermore, Member login should be featured prominently on the home
page and within the first screen.

Home page length:
The home page of the site has over 5.5 screens of scroll which is a
strict no-no in functionality. This should be avoided and sections
such as news etc should be put as headlines only with a link to more
content on a subsequent page. This makes the home page more organized,
easier to navigate and delivers content more effectively to the
reader.

Branding:
The website currently does not have effective branding for the W3
organization. The logo displayed on the top of the html page is the
only attempt for naming the organization to whom the website belongs
to.

Communication:
There is too much content on the home page and thus the viewer does
not get one single message delivered to him but gets flooded by data
and it can easily take up a few minutes for the user to get to his
interested topic. This is a threat as it might result in the use
leaving the website without delving further.

Design change suggestions:

1.	It is highly recommended that the Google search bar is displayed in
a horizontal manner rather than the vertical style that it is there
now. This will optimize page space.

2.	World wide offices can be displayed with a simple map and pointers
on the map for better usability.

3.	Overall navigation can be improved with the use of dynamic navigation. 

4.	It is highly recommended that a professional design agency is
involved in the project to address issues such as branding, navigation
and graphics. However, it must also be kept in mind that the
www.w3.org website is a community site and should have very clean and
user friendly design. The design firm should be advised to make
minimum referential changes to the website so that regular users do
not get alienated.

5.	Links such as to the RSS feed should be placed more prominently on
the first screen of the website so that a user is able to see it
easily. With the new IE 7 launching soon, RSS feeds would be given due
importance on websites which feature them.

Tadas Talaikis
http://www.zenzarra.com/

Received on Friday, 15 July 2005 04:03:08 UTC