The websites of artists should be allowed to bump up against website design rules, but there is one rule that every website proprietor should follow: don’t annoy your visitors. They’ll leave.
Whether or not your website is aimed at direct sales, even if there is no shopping cart nor any link to an online store, that website is a marketing tool. It can’t market you or your product if your visitors leave.
This rant is inspired by Charley Parker’s post about Esao Andrews. For website designers (and their clients), here’s the money quote:
His web site has a delightfully entertaining Flash interface, one of the most amusing I’ve seen, in which a young woman site [sic] demurely in a room with a few furnishings, and her face follows your cursor as you mouse over objects that pop up or change to reveal the sites sections. The interface is done with style and cheeky wit (she looks right at you and flashes her dress up when you choose “Paintings”) and is full of nicely imaginative details.
Unfortunately, once past the amusing nature of the interface, it’s actually not easy to navigate, the galleries consist of colored dots with no indication of previews and the images open in pop-up windows. (Who ever told artists that pop-up windows are a good way to display art work?)
Now, the entire reason for the existence of Charley Parker’s blog, lines and colors, is to shine light on artists, contemporary and historic. He is not in the website design critique business. He wants to say nice things about the artists and send interested folk to their websites. Why is Esao Andrews annoying him? Why is Esao Andrews annoying the folks that Charley Parker sends?
On visiting the website myself, I saw a design boo-boo before the page loaded: the title, “hello.” Hello? What’s a search engine to hang its hat on with a single nondescriptive word like “hello?”
Better a pedestrian and helpful title such as “Esao Andrews: Skate Decks, Drawings, Paintings.”
A plaintext column on the righthand side of the flash animation announces that a whole new website design is in the works. Good. Mr. Andrews is a fun artist and deserves a website that markets his work without turning away visitors.
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Carnival of the Capitalists – October 2nd, 2006…
Welcome to Carnival of the Capitalists – 10/2/06 Edition at 1stMillionAt33.com. Thanks to all those who participated, and thanks to Jay to give me this opportunity to host.
If you’re on my site for the first time, I welcome you to take a look at my S…