Cameron Olthuis

Evan Williams has a great writeup called “Ten Rules for Web Startups” on his blog.

Rule #5 is the one that stands out most to me.

#5: Be User-Centric
User experience is everything. It always has been, but it’s still undervalued and under-invested in. If you don’t know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board. Better to iterate a hundred times to get the right feature right than to add a hundred more. The point of Ajax is that it can make a site more responsive, not that it’s sexy. Tags can make things easier to find and classify, but maybe not in your application. The point of an API is so developers can add value for users, not to impress the geeks. Don’t get sidetracked by technologies or the blog-worthiness of your next feature. Always focus on the user and all will be well.

I see this abused all to often, especially with search engine optimization. For some reason a lot of the so called SEO experts have never figured this one out, they tend to put the search engines before the user.

Remember, even when it comes to SEO your users must come first. Never, ever do anything that isn’t in the best interest of your users. You can worry about the search engines later, they’ll always follow.

USNews.com has a great article on corporate evangelism that I came across while reading Steve Rubel’s Blog.

When I think of brand evangelism, FireFox comes to mind. Within one year FireFox has well over 100 million users! Is there a better example than Firefox? I don’t think so!

If you don’t already have it, Get FireFox.

‘Suck’ is a probably a little harsh. Most home pages don’t accomplish their purpose, and yes, some do ’suck’!

I was reading Seth Godin’s Blog today and came across his entry No good home pages?. While I’m sure Seth was just trying to make a point he says “there are no good home pages except for Google.” Then again who knows, maybe Seth really does think that. He has a point though, most home pages are no good. They’re overwhelming and confusing. Hell, I’ve come across web sites, and spent 10 minutes on the home page alone and still couldn’t tell you what they do. Maybe I’m just not as smart as I think.

If I come to your website and don’t know what you’re about within 30 seconds I’ll go somewhere else, and 30 seconds is being generous. The first thing a home page should tell me is; who you are, what your site does, and how I use it. It’s amazing, even some of the biggest brands miss the point. To me it’s just common sense. Do those involved in creating the User Interface just automatically asume everyone knows what they do? Do they even have a clue what they’re doing?

To me a good home page is simple. It’s easy to use and tells me exactly what it does before it tells me anything else. It’s pleasing to the eye and the navigation makes sense. Remember that if you want my business!