"Choose two aspects of webpages that you think make a poor impression on a user, and choose two aspects of webapges that you think make a good impression on a user. For each aspect, write a paragraph on why think it is good or poor, and give two links to two examples that demonstrate this aspect. (Note, this means I expect four paragraphs and eight links). You may hand this in via a word document, or a webpage. If you choose to do a webpage, you will not be graded on the appearance of the webpage."
Too much information can be a burden on your reader. This website suggests that the average viewer will spend less than 15 seconds on your website! You'd better say what you need to say, and fast, otherwise you will lose your viewers without ever making an impression on them. For example, if I wanted 10 cool facts about kittens, and I went to the Wikipedia article about kittens, I would be overwhelmed with information. The average reader expects a website to tell them exaclty what they need to know and not much more. Let's say I wanted to learn about easy encryption for my iPhone. While this website tells me a lot about the advanced encryption standard, it is very difficult to get through. Any reader would be turned away by the amount of work they'd have to do to get to the desired information.
Something else that frustrates your viewers will be clumsy navigation. Look at this website. This website has difficult navigation that takes a while to learn. The average reader would quickly grow tired and leave the website. Here is another website with navigation issues. The website looks very cool and creative, but there is nothing intuitive about the navigation. I have no idea what I am looking at or how to get anywhere.
Pictures, pictures, pictures! Beautiful pictures can make a website look dreamy. Look at Apple's website. Beautiful. I would spend thousands of dollars on all of these overpriced items merely because of the pictures. A good picture is worth a thousand words, and Apple certainly gets mileage out of the high-resolution photos they've uploaded. Another website that uses photographs to really captivate the audience is Fwdvu's landing page. This site is trying to get vendors to join their cause, and gain more users for their app. Their tactic is to bombard you with pretty pictures until you are unable to say no (more or less).
A website with a tasty layout can really attract the viewers. Tumblr has a very nice layout. Once you sign up for the website, you can follow a couple of things you like, then your homepage will be non-stop scrolling through pictures and videos. It's simple and efficient, and the website can keep people captivated for hours. Facebook is very similar. You can see all the posts from your friends simply by scrolling down. More updates continually load, meaning viewers can spend hours looking at all the cool things their friends are doing.