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.

If you have FireFox take a look at MSN’s BETA Home Page. Did they design this using FrontPage or something? I find it hard to believe that MSN can’t get this page the render properly with other browsers, which leads me to think this is on purpose. But why?

I forgot to mention in my entry (Most Home Pages Really Do Suck) that it’s a must your home page properly renders in all major browsers.

Thanks to Guillaumeb for the tip. He’s also put up a screen shot if you’re still using Internet Explorer.