Don’t you hate it when you think of just the right thing to say—just minutes after the moment has passed you by?
Last week, a friend of mine asked for links to a dozen websites whose aesthetic and usability I liked. Piece o cake. The challenge wasn’t with creating the list, rather, I had trouble keeping the list down to 12. Then yesterday, in an interview, when asked for examples of consumer sites that I love, my mind went blank. I came up with two. Two phenomenal sites, but still, only two.
I hate it when that happens.
Still, I liked this list of favorites so much, I’m sharing. And who knows, maybe this list of FAVORITE DOZEN WEBSITES will start one of those beloved (or annoying) memes on Facebook. Like the 25 things.
N.B. To make a FAVORITE DOZEN WEBSITE list, you have to like both the aesthetic and the usability of the site. It’s not enough to have one—gotta have both. And I’ve not limited this list to consumer—at least two enterprise websites made the cut.
MY FAVORITE DOZEN WEBSITES
Love Blurb; delightful rotating visuals of books greet you on the home page, along with the tagline: Real books: made by you. Easy to navigate. Exploring the Blurb website and
bookstore is like opening a present. What will your book be?
Flickr’s home page invites you in to “Share your photos. Watch the world.” It is a great photo sharing service that has built a loyal community. I like how they show their usage stats on the home page, just like McDonalds did with its “billions and billions served” signs. This moment, Flickr’s stats: 5,248 uploads in the last minute, 558, 832 things tagged with urban, 2.5 million things geotagged this month.Take the tour.
NetApp, a.k.a. Network Appliance, gets an A for their enterprise site. It’s contemporary, modern, inviting. And they do a good job with their language and design, making complex info simple. Brings to mind that phrase coined by Mark Rafter: finding the simplicity on the far side of complexity.
Twitter’s home page is contemporary and playful. Love the bird. Only drawback: the words on the home page copy do not (yet) communicate the actual benefits. It’s not about communicating “what are you doing?” It’s about sharing ideas, thoughts, and links more than it’s about sharing what you’re doing. And it’s more about listening to others than it is about broadcasting. But I digress. I love the aesthetic, and more importantly, I’m a fan of the Twitter service. To the tune of 400+ tweets since last November. Shameless plug: you can follow me @clairegiordano.
In addition to providing a great service (according to friends; I’m not—yet—a customer), everything about SmugMug’s website is beautiful: color, font, layout, images, and words. It’s uncluttered, and there’s a lot on the home page to invite you in. A friend gave me a tour,
and I found the site intuitive to use. Locally owned and operated. And last I checked, they were a big Amazon S3 customer, too. I love everything about SmugMug—and just need to make the time to upload my pics.
delicious
Delicious has done a good job enabling navigation and discovery of social bookmarks, as well as liberating its users from having all their bookmarks in one browser. Or worse, having to “sync”. Why should I have to sync? I have better things to do. Once you start using delicious, you’re hooked. If you’re still saving bookmarks into a browser rather than into the cloud, all I can say is, ignore the corny tagline (”The tastiest bookmarks on the web”) and give delicious a try—it’s well worth it. See what 5 million people like about it.
A great way to send beautiful online invitations to your parties. Light years better than Evite. I love the aesthetic of Anyvite: the logo, the images they rotate in, the fonts. The service is easy to use, and gets the job done. Did I mention that I like Anyvite’s design? Let’s face it, when it comes to inviting someone over, many of us want the invitation to be beautiful. We want our guests to feel special. Even if we are opting for the convenience of online invitations. Especially then.
I like Derek Powazek, and enjoyed working with him on a short-lived project a few years ago. I like the minimalist aesthetic of the MagCloud site; the white background frames the magazines and the text quite nicely. The font works, too. Interesting service— check it out if you’re interested in the Best. New. Magazines. Funded by HP.
Sun just rebranded their website a few months ago. I like the open source software buttons in the left hand column, the compelling feature stories in the center, and the great hed/deks they create for the feature stories. Of course, I’m biased when it comes to Sun, after working
there for 16 years.
Ok, so this isn’t a website per se, this is a particular page on the Wordpress.com website. But oh, what a page. This one page about the features of the Wordpress.com blog hosting service does a great job with its taglines, copy, layout, and use of white space. If you’re considering using the service, the page is effective at communicating a lot of detail in a way that lets you both scan quickly and dig into whatever details you need.
Brainchild of Guy Kawasaki, and admittedly inspired by Popurls. Alltop is a news and blog aggregator, similar to Popurls, yet with an added layer of categories on top, between you and the news articles you choose to browse. Some think of it as a digital magazine rack. Good content, useful navigation, great aesthetic. But oh do I hate the ads that blink. Ouch.
Xkcd is a staple of geek life, and I couldn’t resist putting it on this list. White background, simple black on white sketches, edgy geek humour. Xkcd is contemporary, modern, and a must-visit page.
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