John Nicholson: How Good Is Your Website?

The Website Visual Menu
A Tour of this Website

Design Portfolio
• Website Design Gallery
• Graphic Design Gallery
• Portfolio in QuickTime

Presentation Design
FLASH
• Video Theater
• Website Design Process
• Home Page Design
• Music Videos
• Video Shows
• Pod Presentation
• Business Presentations
QUICKTIME
• Palmtop Video
• Dream Car
• Super Bowl
• Music Window
• Video Phone
• Video Wristwatch
• Video Console
• Video Production Studio
• 1950's Television Set
• Video Presentations
• Drive-In Theater
• Large 20Mb Music Videos

Design & Experience
• How Good Is Your Website?
• Home Page Essentials
• Focused Design
• Designing with Flash
• Designing with Video
• Automotive
• Consumer Electronics
• Computers
• Clothing - Apparel
• Shopping Malls
• Real Estate
• Property Management
• Restaurants
• Healthcare
• Chinese
• Entertainment
• Marketing Materials

Business Websites
• Mix & Match Clothing Website
• Real Estate Showcase
• Real Estate Website
• Shopping Mall Website
• Restaurant Website
• Design Portfolio Website
• Home Theater Websites
• Product Website 1
• Product Website 2
• Retail Website
• Website Content Tour
• Website Structure & Linking

Special Interest Websites
• Online Marketplace
• Asian Film Ratings & Reviews
• Asian Film Photos & Trailers
• Chinese Pop Singers & Songs
• Learn Mandarin Chinese
• Interactive Chinese Book
• Interactive Chinese Painting
• Doan Thi Kim Hong
• Southern California Handball
• OC Chinese-American CC
• Interactive Game
• Special Days in 2008

Website Gallery

How Good Is Your Current Website?

Add the Amount Shown if Your Site Has these Features
[ +10 ] Appealing, Focused Design
[ +10 ] Clean, Uncluttered Layout
[ + 5 ] Masthead to identify the website
[ + 5 ] Large, Exciting, Unique Graphics
[ + 5 ] Flash Presentations to show essential information or a product line
[ + 5 ] Prominent Headline to identify the subject of the page
[ + 5 ] Clear, Concise, Well-Written, Useful Information
[ + 5 ] Periodically New or Refreshed Content
[ +10 ] Search Engine Keywords in the text so people can find your site
[ + 5 ] Easy to Use Navigation Links
[ + 5 ] Thumbnail Graphic Links for important pages
[ + 5 ] Contact Information on every page
[ + 5 ] Page Footer
[ + 5 ] 980-pixel Page Width
[ + 5 ] Reasons for visitors to return to your site often
[ +10 ] Site Listed on top 10 pages of Google and Yahoo

Subtract the Amount for Each of These
[ - 5 ] Splash Page
[ - 5 ] Splash Flash
[ - 5 ] All Flash Site
[ - 5 ] All “Frames” Site
[ -10 ] Unattractive Page Design and Layout
[ -10 ] Visual Clutter
[ - 5 ] Putting Everything in Little Boxes
[ - 5 ] Multiple or Incompatible Colors
[ - 5 ] Too Many Fonts or Text Styles
[ - 5 ] Low Resolution Images
[ - 5 ] Ordinary Stock Photos
[ - 5 ] Clip Art
[ - 5 ] Background Images
[ - 5 ] Backgrounds that make text hard to read
[ - 5 ] Annoying Animations
[ - 5 ] Cursor Danglies
[ - 5 ] Flash Navigation
[ - 5 ] Navigation “Buttons”
[ - 5 ] Dropdown Menus
[ - 5 ] Pages “Under Construction”
[ - 5 ] Dead Links
[ - 5 ] Graphic Headlines (instead of text)
[ - 5 ] Tiny Text
[ - 5 ] Poorly Written Information
[ - 5 ] Grammatical Errors
[ - 5 ] Old Content
[ - 5 ] Background Music or Sound Effects
[ -10 ] Code that crashes browsers
[ -10 ] Site NOT listed on top 10 pages of Google and Yahoo

Total numbers to determine your website's effectiveness (Excel Spreadsheet)

+75 or higher
+35 or higher
+30 to -30
-35 or lower
-75 or lower

Congratulations on an excellent site!
Good, but can be improved significantly
A redesign would be a big improvement
A total redesign is highly recommended
A total redesign is absolutely necessary

A website that presents a poor image is worse than no website at all.

If your website got a low score, I can help. Give me a call or send an email.
You can see samples of my website designs in the Website Design Gallery and a short presentation on home page design in the Voice Over Flash Demo.

There are many excellent suggestions this book!