I starting to think the idea really doesn't matter. I'm seeing "big" looking sites for time tracking and project management. These aren't new ideas. What is new-ish is the formula used to build the site.
1. A title/entry page. Google kinda started this, but Facebook and Linkedin were the ones I thought really did this big time. Facebook let you do exactly nothing before logging in. Surprisingly, this is true today for Twitter, but even more surprisingly for Brizzly, the twitter client. I say surprisingly, because Brizzly must lose a ton of traffic due to the requirement to sign up first. I could be wrong (hence this list of observations).
2. The title page contains an embedded video explaining how to use the site. If a picture speaks a thousand words, then it gets tricky to count how many words a thousand pictures speak (I guess 1000x1000).
3. The video is slick. There are no "ums" or "ahs" in the spoken text. And the video is invariably a screencast of the site in use. These is often background music looping at a much lower volume than the speaker.
4. Fun colors: by this I mean people are not using harsh green and purple combo's anymore. Sites now look like either a "colorist" helped out, or they picked a color then went to a site like Color Scheme Designer 3to find complimentary colors.
5. Rounded corners - they still exist, and they are not going anywhere. This appears to be a standard.
6. Signin/support of OAuth, OpenID, etc. Its an effective (and free) way to communicate that the site is on the up and up. Being an OAuth provider is also a service a site provides to its users (albeit a pretty minor one).
7. An API - Flickr is a great example of this. An API for a site that hosts pictures. Seriously. If they can add an API, anyone can. Twitter's API is fantastically intricate for 140 char messages.
8. Takes an existing simple idea and adds a new whistle. Brizzly is a great example. Its not much of a site to be honest. But the naysayers will have a difficult time bringing it down given it does so much of the items on this list well. Praized is a great example as well.
9. The title page makes three key points. I've seen this pattern a few times. The point of the "points" is less standard than the fact they exist. Photobucket, 88miles, etc.
10. There is a noticable lack of advertising. On the title page, ads are not shown. Within the site, ads are usually not shown. I have still no idea how these sites pay for themselves.
11. There is precious little time devoted to the kind of SEO stuff I've seen work in the past. Not sure if that is a path to success or an oversite, but you rarely see things like keywords in a site's title, or a meta-description used as the alt tag of a prominent image in the site.
12. Cute graphics. See Twitter, Brizzly, Fire eagle...all oh so cute. The point is that the cuteness is an icebreaker. Spend a couple days on "friendly-ing-up" the site, and people will respond.
13. It doesn't hurt to have visitors see that there are already people using the API via an applications gallery. In other words "See? We're so successful, look at how many people are using our service!" Of course, the "gallery" contains apps that were either developed internally, or by very close friends. Again, I cite Twitter and Brizzly. Do a reference check on those respective site owners and see how far back their relationship extends.
14. Full width title area and footer, and two columns centered for the content. This is very consistent. Occassionally the center is three mini-columns to show the "three points".
15. The footer mini-sitemap. This is still very common. You see this on big sites like Youtube.com and Digg.com. Its also on Meetup.com.
16. Still with Meetup, the point of the site should make people look and say, "well this is an obvious idea". Because if it is obvious, then you should obviously use it.
17. Testamonials don't hurt. This isn't consistent across the board, but often sites will refer to popsitive press they've received from majors news orgs like Wall St. Journal, CNN, etc. I guarantee you could reproduce this effect either by managing 3 websites yourself (and providing cross-testamonials) or getting three friends to "testify" to the greatness of your site.
18. Gradients are still everywhere. As are drop shadows. Agree2 is a good example. Subtle, but shadows and graidents are there. Actually, Agree2 fails on a couple of other fronts: they show 4 points instead of 3, and they have a link to their video instead of embedding it in the title page. Huge flaws....
19. Web 1.0 carry-overs still exist. Sites still have the privacy and terms pages. There is still about, contact us, we're hiring.
20. Somebody with skills made the logo. This is fairly consistent. The logo would be good on a business card or hat. Only Smugmug really, really deviates from this idea.
21. Many (if not all) have a search facility on the main site. Quite a few are not powered by Google, which I find odd.
Monday, January 11, 2010
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