A new Hulk movie is coming out soon. By all accounts, this one isn’t a monstrosity featuring squid DNA, and much more closely resembles the comic franchise it was built upon. Like the movie’s signature character Bruce Banner, I’m generally considered to be a fairly mellow fellow guy. (Unlike him I have neither a doctorate or a gamma radiation tan). Yet, like Dr. Banner, I also can sometimes feel a powerful rage coming over me.
Sadly, I don’t gain a few hundred pounds of muscle and turn green. I just make growly noises and squint my eyes.
I’m reliably informed that it’s not that intimidating.
What is the source of this pathetic geek rage? Web designs that are one page proofs of a pretty homepage, accompanied by a summary by clients to the effect of “Make the rest of the site look like the homepage.”
Why does this drive me insane? Because this rarely (in fact, never) works, and I find myself going back and altering (and re-altering) the carefully crafted markup and CSS that was made for the aforementioned homepage so that the core functionality of their website actually fits inside the design. Usually the “design”, as a result, turns out to resemble the homepage less and less with each pass, until what is left is typically some sort of chimeric mismatched beast.
I’m sure there’s plenty of smart methodologies to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but it occurs to me just often enough that I feel the need to rant about it here.
Look, as Jeffrey Zeldman said in one of those insightful tweets that I’m always hoping to witness (instead of the less insightful tweets about the contents of a man’s lunch): “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.”
I think that’s one of the most useful/relevant things I’ve seen written about web design in months. Based on the responses at his blog, I don’t think I’m alone.
I’m going to add an addendum to this. Barring some exceptions in the “wrapping paper” category, a pretty homepage is not a website. Nor should the homepage be the focus of the design. Creating a design by starting with the homepage, handing it to the developers to cut, and then later heavily modifying said design to actually accomodate the core features of the site wastes time, money, and patience.
Let’s think about it for a moment. Are your customers coming to your website to check out a nifty banner? Are they there to look at a really wicked paragraph of “about me” text? Are they there to see an embedded flash movie of the ocean?
In case you’re not following along, the answer is no. (Except maybe for the ocean movie, depending on the purpose of your site.) They are there to shop at your store, read your blog, play your game, read the news, share their life story, or fulfill whatever function it is that your website serves in their life.
Now, granted, some pages (like blogs about adorable critters) combine the homepage and the core function of the site. In the case of the linked blog, it’s all about displaying cute animals, and they’re doing that from page one. But even in that case, the homepage is following the function of the site, rather than the design following an arbitrarily pretty (and potentially pointless) homepage.
Look, take a page from Daniel Burka, who at the WDN 2008 conference talked about taking the inspiration for the design of a site from the core function the site serves. He’s done it with a little site you may have heard about (Digg, do I even need to link this page?), and I dare say it’s worked well for them.
Seriously, next time you have a pretty proof of your website’s homepage all decked out with bells and flowers, do me a favor and use it to wrap your daughter’s next birthday present. Then, after you’re done affixing the bow, go back to the drawing board, figure out where the tasty flavor of your site lives, and design that first. I think you’ll find that the site (and your budget) will do better as a result.
