Comparing web sites

While design can be subjective, for instance it would have been catastrophic to limit artists such as Turner and Van Gogh to canvas size and content, web page design should be judged objectively.

I looked at many pages when considering the design possibilities and was struck by the differences in approach that similar Companies have. I was specifically looking at directly competing companies in the same market from retail, service, leisure and manufacturing. I checked the 'big name' U.K. companies such as Currys and Dixons who both compete in consumer electrics, as well as international companies such as United Parcel Services (UPS) and Fedex from the service industry. They all had interesting aspects, were more or less what I was expecting and all used different technologies to get the job done.

I was also looking at pages which appeal to all ages but have a 'youthful image' where I came across the offerings of Manchester United and Liverpool football clubs.

Manchester United ( http://www.manutd.com ) is a glossy site, which could equally well be printed in a magazine format. It contains information on players and personalities of the club and supporters and a secure shop. It looks good, is easy to navigate, and gives the information that a user might require of it, as well as lots of images and facts, but is pretty static.

The Liverpool site is a completely different offering ( http://www.liverpoolfc.tv ) and contains almost all of Nielsens suggestions, offering on the home page the ability to view the site with or without graphics. It uses animations and a lot of JavaScript, but compensates for long load times by quickly loading animations and audio that plays while the long loading scripts continue loading as it were, in the background. Navigation is extremely easy and is rich in information and again secure shopping is available. It is a site I would recommend looking at specifically with design in mind as it is well built and deals with some of the issues successfully.

What did surprise me was that the Manchester United site seemed to take an age to load, and paging through became more and more tedious as the time taken to load added up.

Though the Liverpool site contained the technologies that are reputed to be slow, the animations that ran added to the experience and seemed to load very quickly.

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