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Comparing Websites of Rival Companies

I was deciding between two places to eat today and had both websites side by side in browser tabs. I could have gone either way in terms of what I wanted to eat but the convenience factor of finding the location and/or being persuaded along the way of data finding made all the difference. As usability theories predict, I patronized the company that didn’t waste my time. So I thought applying that same exercise to major rivals in the business world would be interesting.

This is NOT a in-depth design review of the websites. Judging based on usability, creativity and overall impression based actual task performance on the websites — I choose a “victor”.

Adidas vs. Nike

Adidas Website Screen Shot
Nike Website Screen Shot
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25 Inspiring Indie Band Websites

The Arts & Crafts Record Label in Canada is my favorite record label. I support many artists including Broken Social Scene, Feist, Stars, The Dears, The Stills, Brandan Canning and Kevin Drew — so I know this label and what they are about. They are truly interested in making creatively expressive music just as we are interested in making creatively expressive design. So let’s see what happens when one crosses paths with the other.

The 25 Artist Websites of Arts & Crafts Record Label:
Amy Millan

Amy Millan Website Screen Shot
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En Fuego! Best & Worst NBA Websites

NBA teams have a license to ill when it comes to their websites because they want to keep you excited, informed and motivated to go see the games either in person or on TV. However, only some are En Fuego, most are either a satisfactory Aight or worse of all complete Scrubs. The Miami Heat website is the worse of all. I suspect they hired one of their cheerleaders to moonlight on it.

En Fuego

These teams have the best blend of creativity, visual excitement and uniqueness that make them stand above the rest. The NY Knicks for example just give off a “Heart of NY” feel to it that I think all the other cities should try to capture.

The New York Knicks
Knicks Website Screen Shot
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Farewell IE6 – It’s Been Craptastic

With the debut of Internet Explorer 8 and the overall leading market share of IE7 — we will begin to see IE6 erode into history at a much quicker pace. Yes, let’s all praise the Lord for second. Done? Ok — IE6 came out roughly around September 2001, and has been driving web developers nuts ever since. Just last week, I cursed it’s foul name as I had to debug a problem that only surfaced in it’s vile window. Before we officially warn you about the door hitting your ass on the way out, let’s reminisce about some of the bad times we had:

Security — Sad.

IE6 Timeline
Internet Explorer 6’s golden age, around 2002 and 2003 where it captured about 95% of the browser market unfortunately led to it being the main target of hackers, spy ware, phishing rings and nefarious scammers across the globe. Active X and Active scripting really just opened the door for these vile bastards and I think Microsoft products can be directly credited for phrases like “identity theft”.
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10 Shockingly Beautiful US Government Websites!

Beautiful? Government Website? Is that even possible? Oxymorons aside, we had to dig deep to surf our way through some of the most mind-numbingly aesthetic and usability challenged un-noteworthy websites of all time. At some points, I kind of felt like George W. Bush designed and Cheney programmed these themselves they were so bad!… but I managed to make it through without too much alcohol to bring it to you all with some honorable mentions to boot.

Air Force

Air Force Website
This website is first class. It’s a recruiting center meant and it does it’s job perfectly for the demographic it’s aimed at.
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SEO Checklist – 10 Simple Steps

Spiders, the economic crisis, an angry Chris Brown and a woman scorned are all things you should be scared of. Thankfully for web developers, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not on that list. We’re going to go over some simple SEO techniques that are easy to incorporate into your web development production routine. These are the things you should be doing before doing the more advanced stuff which we will cover at a later date.
Search Engine Optimization Checklist Scroll
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FREE Vector Twitter and RSS Icons!

Rolled Eyed Twitter Icon Screen Shot
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3 Great Website Redesigns of 2009 (so far)

It’s only March and we’ve already seen a couple of high profile website redesigns. Most notably — on the day of Barack Obamas’ inaguaration, the new whitehouse.gov website was premiered. The difference was so bold that it captured big time attention from big media. In some instances it was used to signify the difference between Obama’s new hotness versus Bush’s old and busted. Since then, ESPN rolled out of their beta and pitchfork.com (indie music website) premiered their new website this weekend.

It’s All About Change

www.whitehouse.gov before and after
A comment that some made was that Bush’s whitehouse.org was absolutely perfect. It was perfect because it kept people disinterested in what he was doing! I can see the creative brief now: lull and bore the dissenters into a coma. It uses a traditional three column layout with nav on left, content in center and some call-outs on the sidebar. It’s competant but I think most people would agree it is not inspiring — which it should be as we found out this past election.

Obama on the other hand, is about change and his web team was not afraid to defy convention of what we think of as a government website. He uses many common website layout features such as:

  • “Hero” graphic — is the single most important visual element on page. Typically communicates the single most important message.
  • Blog — frequently updated content in a very accessible format.
  • Newsletter — keepin’ the old citizens informed.
  • Usability — trafficking people to where they want to go.

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Top 30 Indie Band Website Designs

Creating a band website is a completely different animal than your normal run of the mill corporate or business website. Rules of usability and standards compliance go out the window in favor of creativity and innovation. Indie bands in particular do their best to portray how fresh they are and why you should listen to them. There is a fine balance between being functional and usable versus annoying and here is the top 30:

Random order and separated into 4 categories; illustrative, blog-like, photographic and miscellaneous.

ILLUSTRATIVE:

Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene Official Website
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