The perfect website formula

ByLaurel Papworth

Rackspace UK have developed a formula for determining if you have the perfect website. It’s kinda hokey but here goes: Pwebsite = { ((14.14* EaseNav) + (13.56*Speed) + (13.11*CleanDes) + (10.89*Func) + (10.89*Up)) – ((12.63*Pops) + (10.32*Ads) +(5.21*MultiM)) } / 6.26 Thank God they explain it: The Formula explained Pwebsite = the degree of perfection…

Rackspace UK have developed a formula for determining if you have the perfect website. It’s kinda hokey but here goes:

Pwebsite = { ((14.14* EaseNav) + (13.56*Speed) + (13.11*CleanDes) + (10.89*Func) + (10.89*Up)) – ((12.63*Pops) + (10.32*Ads) +(5.21*MultiM)) } / 6.26

Thank God they explain it:

The Formula explained

Pwebsite = the degree of perfection of the website

EaseNav = ease of navigation

Speed = the speed at which pages load

CleanDes = clean and simple design

Func = functionality -‘ does what it says on the tin’

Up = the site is always alive

And:

Pops = the site tries to give you pop-ups

Ads = excessive advertising

MultiM = Flash and other multimedia

I hate Flash too!

I had coffee with Maxine Sherrin of westciv last week – she thought the perfect Web 2.0 website was clean elegant and simple. A designers point of view? I think the perfect website is messy with lots of user generated content and continually dynamically being updated. A users point of view? We’re both right.

I guess its Google Classic (which I like too)…

….versus Google Personalised.


Which one be you? Oh, and a tip for the design narks out there – consumers don’t always care about functionality and design if the site has content we want. After all, MySpace ain’t a pretty, easy-to-use site! So, cool sites can be a bit cumbersome and less slick – it makes them “edgier”. And if the ‘content’ is user generated, so much the better. There’s a lot of gorgeous, well designed, undervisited digital graveyards out there!

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5 Comments

  1. Personally I like the old maxim that if there are more than seven links on a Web page, users will get confused and not know where to click.

    Of course, this doesn’t really apply to the new world of user-generated content where people can do whatever they want 🙂 But I’m more interested in traditional sites where most of the content is created in-house and external users can add to it but not change the basic format 🙂

    Cheers,

    Renai LeMay
    News Journalist
    ZDNet Australia

    ps: Don’t take this as the official view of my employer!!

  2. Sweetie, I know that isn’t the official view of your employer 😛

    In fact, one of the best (and first sites) to have the main page a big glob of user-gen was http://downloads.com (cnet/zdnet for those who don’t know). And it was CNET that spun off Vignette which became one of the main content management systems for collaborative use.

    What about Joomla! Renai? There is an option on the main page for the user to select their own style sheets or create their own. Think of a Yahoo! personalised page – users choose menus at the top or side, font, colours etc. The only control the distributor retains is the logos/company graphics, and the smorgasboard of style sheets.

  3. Hi Laurel its only me, Pete (the fool who thought you were male-soooooooo sorry) thanks for your message, I’m amazed to here from you-you’re semi famous on my course module(multimedia technology-communities online)!! How did you come across my blog? In my lesson a few weeks ago, the tutor handed us a copy of part of your blog-we were asked to analyse!

    p.s. Indiana Jones trilogy-great choice-its up there with Back to the Future!!
    Pete 🙂

  4. How did you come across my blog? Aaah, I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you, pixel by pixel. 🙂

    Actually it’s pretty easy. I set up a Google Alert on my name. Media Alerts are something that marketing departments use to monitor when their company is mentioned in traditional press. Media alert companies charge a fortune for the service. So if you are British Telecom or Telstra, you get “press clippings” of any mention of your company name.

    The problem with traditional Media Alerts is that they are usually regurgitated press releases. The marketing department writes up and releases a press release. The journalists consume it and usually vomit it back into the media unchanged. (yuck, sorry for the metaphor, but its apt). This isn’t what always happens (I’m sure Renai LeMay is different 🙂 )but still… media alerts don’t tell the company what is happening to their brand in online communities (forums and blogs). That’s a big mistake in my book – at a minimum, marketing should check Technorati, YouTube and Flickr once a week for brand recognition. See who is generating what around their image…

    In an online environment, those services are becoming passe (with the funny accent over the “e” which I can’t type). Google Alerts lets me set up a bot that tells me when my name is mentioned – usually it splits the email (daily or weekly) into two sections – Traditional media (newspapers online usually) and blogs (the rest of the User Generated Crap oops Content). It’s a free service. Then I can see who is writing about my blog or courses or presentations, without having to worry about trackbacks. And in your case, as you didn’t link to a bloglet, there would’ve been NO trackbacks.

    We love our Google Alerts 🙂 (PS set one up for ‘social networks’ or ‘online communities’ – you’ll get the latest press releases, quote them in an essay and ace an A++ ) Heh. Thank me later 😛

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