What would you consider a good website? Rather ambiguous question I know, but I have created 4 or 5 websites and while they are "functional". None have really grabbed me as brilliant. (Which is down to me, I know)

I am looking for comments on what users find attractive in a website. Not just a cosmetic appearance but functionality and content.

Do you like lots of pictures or maybe you prefer "white space" (a clean appearance)?

What about menus? Top, side, bottom, are there any preferences?

Flash, CSS, html, java? Anyone have prefences on how what or why?

Thanks for any input.

Col

I wonder how many different opinions you'll get on this one. But I do have a lot of opinions on it.

I'm a fairly practical person so I'm into functionality. I hate bloat and I hate fancy junk just for the sake of being fancy funk. Sometimes I feel like things are there simply cause the designer though it was fun to do, as opposed to serving any function or even being that cool to look at.

An example of what I mean... My bank. The log in page has a big picture (either java or flash --may be java), and it takes forever to load. The pictures is not relevant to the bank at all and is totally unnecessary. It adds nothing, but it takes forever to load. I just want to log in and be done with it. While little things can add to the overall look of the site, there isn't any reason it has to be that picture. In fact, it's just a static picture -- I can't figure out why it's so slow (or why something like java would be required to put it there).

No matter how much anything thinks something like that is nifty looking, I just don't get why they'd want to put up with it while they're trying to navigate the site and every time they go there.

I don't like menus at the bottom cause they're hidden and I got to scroll there. Probably my preference is across the top, and I like the kind that drop down with sub-menus -- in case I'm not quite sure where something might be, that helps.

Logical organization. Menu titles that make sense. Ways to get back to where you started. For instance, I've found times when I've gone into something on a menu and can't seem to get back where I was without just using the back button. i.e. it's always nice when all the main menus are on every page, and also nice if each sub-section has a direct link back to the main page of that sub-section. And every page should have a link back to the home page.

"Content" is difficult to say cause it depends on what the site is about.

Now, even though I'm practical, just plain black and white with nothing is boring. Though I can deal with that. I get that a site should be nice looking. But you don't have to get fancy and snazzy to be nice looking. Nice can be subtle things, like a very subtle textured background. And you can have menus and such that look nice without getting fancy and having them do tricky, cool things.

And easy to read fonts, with colors that look nice and text that can be read on the background. I hate a lot of different colors. I think it looks cheap and it freaks my eyes. Especially when there's too much bright red. And dark print on light, or white on very dark. The background should never interfere with reading.

I HATE FLASH! Er. Java depends on what you're doing with it.

This is probably going to seem to defy some things I just said but I've always liked this site:
Ultima: The Reconstruction (http://reconstruction.voyd.net/)
I don't like the yellow font and there is a tiny bit too much color. But I like the background, I like that the boxes are just black and don't contain the background. This keeps it easier to read. I think it is well organized so it satisfies the practical side of me. I also happen to like dark backgrounds with white print. So I think the number of colors could be reduced... but it otherwise looks very nice. I never said I liked "blah" and this is still nice looking and well organized. The font could be bigger.

Simple DirectMedia Layer (http://www.libsdl.org/)
The light blue isn't really my color, but it's very neat and simple. Nice font that's easy to read. Menus organized. Nothing fancy about it.

Amazon - badly organized website!

Bad web site cause never sure where anything is:
Getting Started with Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/#feature-learn)

Hmm... don't know how that got posted. I was off trying to find examples and came back and it was posted. Must've hit the Enter or something without knowing it.

Anyway...
http://www.midkemia.com/ (http://necrobones.com/dragons/dfb.htm)
Great example of background interfering with reading. Sheesh. (Although I like the music - don't know why it's not playing for me anymore.)

Gourmet Cat Food, Wet Cat Food, Dry Cat Food, Kitten Food | Fancy Feast® (http://fancyfeast.com/)
One of my least favorite sites on the face of the earth.

An example of "hard to get back where you started," i.e. hard to get back to your home page once you're in something, etc. is Amazon. They're really bad about that. I get into something in my account and then can't get back to the home page of my account, stuff like that.

Exult (http://exult.sourceforge.net/)
I don't particularly like it, but just what I mean by "subtle textured background." (The print needs to be darker on this.)

Had enough? :p (Yeah, I realize there was a bit of Ultima stuff in there.)

Many thanks. It is interesting to see and understand other peoples perspective of what they see as a good website. Cheers

I think this really depends on the context.
After all a Google type layout would make for a bad arty site..

Turn this around and what do you think about AMHD's layout ?

Doesn't AMHD run on some standard software used for this sort of site? I'm sure I mailed Rick some months/years ago on finding another site that used the same layout.

As far as I am concerned:-

The artwork or colour (US folks.. . Note proper spelling, LOL) scheme does not detract from the content or the site.

Navigation is comprehensive, as in I find it easy to get around the site.

The content itself is from the contributors, which I have always found to be helpful.

Yep the base of AMHD is vBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com/) although heavily moded with a custom skin and other tweaks.

I think at the end of the day the really important thing about a site is it's usability.