MySiteSucks.Com

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Have you done this lately?
Visit your website as if you are a random visitor. Put yourself in the shoes of the beholder…

  1. is your site easy to navigate?
  2. is there anything that’s confusing or not intuitive?
  3. is the most important information on the homepage?
  4. does your site clearly direct visitor to all other important components – i.e. your music page, youtube, merchandise store, show calendar, facebook, twitter…etc
  5. would you want to return in the future or is the site too confusing to ever warrant coming back?
  6. does your site suck? be honest and make some adjustment that with keep people coming back.

 

 

  • http://midwayfair.org Jon Patton

    This is kind of like editing your own writing. It’s hard to see the flaws in your own work. #1 is especially difficult – maybe even impossible.

    When I did my first version of an HTML site, I had what I thought were big, obvious navigational link buttons. It turned out that people thought they were part of the banner head or background and weren’t going anywhere except the home page because they thought there wasn’t anything else! I made them look more like buttons and everyone was happy.

    I use WordPress now, but if you’re designing your own site, or getting someone to design it for you, ask one web savvy person for their opinion on the finished product and two of the most internet oblivious people you know. You’ll learn more about the site’s user-friendliness from the last two than from a team of web designers. :)

  • http://www.joyike.com grassrootsy

    Good idea Jon!
    Ask two web-savvy friends to take a look at your site and tell you what they’d change.

  • http://www.thepittsburghscene.com Craig

    All great points – one of the things I’m borderline paranoid about is web usability. When evaluating it, #6 is important – be honest with yourself. Remember that unless your site is intuitive to navigate and use, it’s worthless to the people who need it, regardless of how much time/effort/money you’ve sunk into it

    If you’d want to get really in-depth in web usability I HIGHLY recommend the book “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steven Krug. I’ve read it cover to cover probably 3 times and use the advice in it pretty religiously on my site

  • http://www.joyike.com grassrootsy

    Craig, that is such an excellent point. I am a huge believer in the fact that the majority of web surfers (at least in American culture) don’t like to think for themselves if they don’t have to and don’t like to remember information if they can be reminded about it from a third party