Part 1 : On navigation, search engines and a giant splash

Tell us why you think the Web is like a strip mall in Monterey, CA?
The Web has all these wonderful sites, educational and informational, but they're surrounded by this sea of crass commercialism. The Web has the potential to be a powerful force for good, but business has taken over. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against business and making money. In fact, I was the first person to state that Web design was about making money and I took a lot of heat for that comment back in 1998. What's sad to me is the Web could be so much more.

What is the most gratifying thing about your book's success and what is the single most common question you are asked in regard to bad web design?
The most gratifying part of the book is the fact that people have written me to tell me not only that my book was the first computer book they enjoyed reading, but that they learned what makes a successful website. Here's a typical e-mail:

"I just purchased your book a couple days ago. It's probably the best book on Web design that I've read so far!! I thought my site was the hottest thing on the Web, but after reading your book, I had to admit that my site REALLY sucked! I'm now in the process of fixing it, but it still sucks, though not as bad."

Do you think web design is improving as web designers increase their knowledge of what good web design entails?
Every time I stop to ask myself this question my first reaction is, "Yes, Web design has gotten better" but after I think about the question for a bit I realize bad design is always changing. Instead of animated images, divider bars, multiple colors of text, etc., I'm seeing more use of smaller text, inappropriate uses of Macromedia Flash, Mystery Meat Navigation and bad navigation. There also seems to be more sites that ignore the visually handicapped.

Bad navigation has become a really big problem because websites are getting larger and more difficult to organize. And then there's the whole problem of search engines. Most search engines you find on a corporate site are terrible. The only way you can find anything is if you know what you're looking for and how to spell it. For example, I was trying to find a Hewlett-Packard printer. I went to one mail order site and got something like nine responses when I searched for "Hewlett-Packard", 243 responses for "HP", none for "H-P", and 53 responses for "Hewlett." Something's wrong here.

Another thing that's really interesting, is some of the oldest mistakes are still being made by companies who should know better. For example, I just performed some consulting work for a huge international company, not just Fortune 500, but Fortune really-small-number. One of their divisions had a 693Kb Splash page, 693K in the year 2001? Less than 10% of people in the United States have high speed connections, but this specific country's high speed connections was something like .1%

What does "Darwebinism" mean in relation to the Web?
As I've said on my site, Darwebinism is the Darwinian extinction of sites that, for whatever reasons, fail to catch on because no one can navigate the sites or find what they want. Those sites that yell, "Let them eat Flash!" or who think Mystery Meat Navigation is the main course won't be around long. It's one thing to create a Flashturbation Fantasy and another to create an effective e-commerce site. The old boo.com was an example of a site that failed because it was too hard to use.

And what about the evils of splash pages?
Wal-Mart doesn't block the entrance to its stores by making you watch a movie or make you listen to someone who explains the history of the company. That's what a splash page does. It blocks your visitor from getting to the meat of your site. Also, certain search engines give a higher ranking to the contents of your root page (where the splash page is located) and splash pages rarely have any information. A splash page can hurt your rankings with a search engine.

What are the main problems facing a web designer?
As far as site design goes, the main problems are organizing the content and setting up an effective navigational scheme.

Continued...