Our minds on media.

Musings on the effects of media on cognition.

Your Web Site Does Not Begin at the Beginning

Now and then google points me to a page of this kind and I am forced to grumble to myself having come so close to information I was seeking only to be barred from it by an unthoughtful web designer. Type “mountain dew ad agency” into google (as in: who is Mountain Dew’s Ad Agency) and you will receive this link. The first thing you’ll note is that this page is a mess with hardly any central focus. The second thing you will see is that this is the answer to Question #4. The question isn’t on the page and there’s no way to get back to it — not even by tinkering with the nonsensical URL. The point here is: people end up on your web site from all sorts of trajectories and you have no way of knowing this. Most small businesses I’ve found tend to leave crucial information off their home page; a phone number and hours of operation. No one should have to click a link to get that basic information! Each and every page on a web site needs to be oriented and properly linked to related pages. This is BASIC. Read a usability site please.

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