What's more important in a website?(Uni related)

[Matt G]

OK...I need a favour from you guys(could also do with a favour from a mod in setting up an official poll)

Bottom line, I'm doing some research for a website design project at Uni and I want some kind of grounding for a statement as to whether or not the average websurfer thinks that accsessability is more important in a website that attractiveness/coolness.

The Gateworld crew are a decent enough cross section of websurfers so you're basically it.

So the big question is this: As a websurfer, what do you think is more important in a website? An attractive design( possibly including animations) or accsessability? Or are both equally important?

Green reps go out to all that vote.

Thank you in advance.

The show is yours

[Cronus]

For me its accessability. Initially the attractiveness of the website is what attracts you but if it doesn't do what you want it to, or its way to hard, or it takes too long, then I'll just give up on it, no matter how nice it looks.
Accessability comes first, it is the key for me, if its not easy then I'll give up and go somewhere else.
Don't get me wrong, an attractive website is good but one with good access is much better. Accessibility is a fundamental thing for me on the internet.
Hope this helps.

[ShadowMaat]

Accessability and ease of use win over a pretty face every time. What good is a snazzy design if people can't navigate the site? Kinda defeats the purpose, IMO. I'm not a "form over function" kinda girl.

Plus, you have to think of people on low bandwidth. There are still a lot of poor sods on dial-up who just don't have the time (or sometimes the power) to load graphics-heavy sites. If something takes too long to load or worse, crashes their comp, they aren't gonna bother with the site.

And personally, I don't like active swirly things in web pages, it distracts me from whatever I'm trying to read. No blinky lights, no flashing text, no glaring colors that leave you with after-images when you look away. And whoever designed that little prog that trails junk after your cursor needs to be taken out and shot. Repeatedly. Active stuff on the buttons, maybe, but not everywhere.

Which is not to say it should be a white page with black text and nothing else. A slick interface can make a boring subject more palatable (to a certain degree) and the "prettier" sites no doubt win over the "plain" ones, but the trick is not to overdo it.

Good luck.

[Wass]

For my dissertation I developed website from my research both are equally important as mentioned by Cronus who made a good point which I agree with. It is also important to remember who you are aiming the website for what age group e.g if it is young then attractiveness/funkiness will attract a lot of young students. There other factors such as dyslexic people like myself who may find it difficult to read small text so you have a good size text and neutral colours.

Hope this helps.

[scaryperson]

Accessability, very important, and the layout, you don't want to have to search 5 pages for a particular link....

If the page looks good (it doesn't have to be spectacular, just attractive enough to lure people in) then that is not superbly important

Just accessability is the key, like when you want to get onto your favourite site but it wont let you for 5 days.......... lol

--Tan

[ShadowMaat]

I know I've bypassed some of the more... pretentious sites and clicked on "site map" just so I could get more or less directly where I was going without having to go through twenty steps of decipher an alien language to figure out how to get there.

Which basically means clarity: say what you mean, mean what you say. Fill your site full of Oma-isms in all the navigational areas and the only thing ascending will be peoples' tempers.

[FoolishPleasure]

Less is more. Don't get too fancy - remember, a lot of people have older computers or don't have high-speed access and they will not wait "forever" for a page to load. They will move on to something easier on their 'puter.

[strivaria]

Another vote for accessability. That includes:

• either keeping the site low-bandwidth for dialup flunkies like me or giving me the option to do a low-BW version of the site
• Easy navigation
• stay away from the bleeding edge of web technology as not every browser supports all the new bells and whistles (and also goes back into the BW issue) If you must use bells and whistles, set up the site so that it won't break for people who can't use them.
• Verify your site through at least two or three other browsers that aren't IE to catch broken code. I use Firefox and if a site doesn't load properly because it was coded to IE specs... I don't go back.

[Lunar]

I'd go for accessability too. I think Gateworld itself is an excellent example of a site that, whilst being very attractive, is also extremely easy to access. I've been a member of a few other forums and this was by far and away the easiest to navigate and the easiest to 'personalise' (with the user-friendly interface for making funky sigs etc). Even though it wasn't the most visually impressive, it's the one I've stuck with.