Websites Good and Bad

A prime example of a website that maximizes usability and navigation is http://www.sun-sentinel.com/, the Web site for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which covers the Fort Lauderdale area and the surrounding counties.

A brief glance at the front page of the Web site reveals several crucial components of a good site. As we discussed in class, the "F" of hits on a Web page means that crucial information should be put at the upper left-hand corner of the Web site. On the Sun-Sentinel's site, the top story is placed on the top left, with a succinct head, a nut graf, and a picture. The user is not confused as to what is the paper's most important story, and readers are often offered supplemental links to multimedia. On Sunday, May 27, the lead story was on the preponderance of boating accidents in South Florida; viewers were offered an interactive map of past accidents (http://www.sun-sentinel2.com/mapping/boating/). This is itself a prime example of visual journalism, as users roll over a specific site and get a descriptive of the corresponding accident.

To the left of the main story, a small weather graphic gives users a concise look at the current weather and the radar. Placed so close to the main story, this unobtrusive yet effective graphic allows visitors to the site to quickly get the local weather, not unlike the Dashboard weather widget on a Mac.

A toolbar of sorts across the top of the screen offers links to the other sections of the Web site. These sections are just as well-ordered as the front page, with the lead story on the top left and links to blogs and other multimedia posted near relevant stories.

Indeed, the large number of links on the front page of each section allows for greater navigation. Once clicked on, an exhaustive panel running down the LEFT side of the page offers links to almost everywhere else in the Web site. This combination of seamless navigation and extensive multimedia is why this Web site is, to me, ideal.

In contrast, the Web site for the Daily Freeman (http://www.dailyfreeman.com/site/news.asp?brd=1769), a paper in Ulster County in New York, lacks many of the tools necessary for a user-friendly Web site. Interestingly enough, it is not that the setup is wildly different from the Sun-Sentinel's; it is the little things that make the difference.

On the front page, the lead story is placed correctly in the upper-left corner; however, there are no supplementary multimedia options. In a world where different media are coming together more and more, simply offering the reader the text of a story is not enough. A paper's Web site must offer more than the hard copy of the paper does, or it will quickly become obsolete.

Below the front page, lesser stories are offered, along with sub-head. Here, quality is actually less important than quantity, as the sub-heads and nut grafs take up space that could be used by more stories. CNN.com does it best, but many Web sites offer a cornucopia of headlines, allowing the reader more access.

The front pages of the site's other sections have the same dearth of multimedia and long, space-gulping sub-heads. While the basic setup of the paper allows for some usability, the site lacks the meat of multimedia and linkage so obvious in Web sites like the Sun-Sentinel's.