Recently the Disney Store in the UK (disneystore-shopping.disney.co.uk
) redesigned their site with a “reputable” big design firm. The result
was a huge backlash from the design professional community. The new
site was using design practices that were 5 years old and made a highly
inefficient site. Before they changed it, Disney was showing up in
Google selling “spacer gifs” which are extra layout images, an
out-dated way of designing out a site.
The result was an open letter to Disney which had huge support.
Needless to say, Disney changed the site.
Fortunately, there is a rough test that takes 5 seconds to do. There
exists a set of “standards” for web design. Think of them as building
codes for web sites. The director of the organization that creates them
is Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web. You can visit
their site (http://validator.w3.org)
and type in a site to see how well it meets these standards. A quick
test is to type in a design firmÂ’s web site to see if it meets
standards. If you have time you can even test a few from their
portfolio. Now, you donÂ’t have to follow building codes when you build
a house, but wouldn’t you rather hire a contractor that did?”