Web design conventions, and when to drop them.

IrishExpat

I have been designing for small-medium sized business clients for a number of years now - and from nearly the first project I have gone along with all of the usual design conventions and the same 'general' layouts. I say general, as my designs and ideas obviously differ depending on the businesses' communications needs.

Just to list some of the 'expected' elements.

• Global header and footer
• Logo to the top left.
• Navigation bars (static or dropdown)
• Footers loaded with links/social media/sitemap
• Contact forms with the usual tags
• sidebars with widgets
• Same structure - home, about, team, portfolio, contact etc

So this time around I pitched an design prototype to a new client omitting these usual 'standards', and he was delighted with the result. Now it's not a complex website, more of a brochure website (5 pages),

but I'm beginning to see a trend in absolute minimalist websites - and less of the 'it's there because we can' mentality.

Now I know the arguments for conventions - users like uniformity and they know their way around the standard layouts, but to paraphrase Steve Jobs, the users don't know what they want until you show them.

I want to develop on this, so feel free to add to or disagree.

KonFusion

IrishExpat wrote: »

Just to list some of the 'expected' elements.

• Global header and footer
• Logo to the top left.
• Navigation bars (static or dropdown)
• Footers loaded with links/social media/sitemap
• Contact forms with the usual tags
• sidebars with widgets
• Same structure - home, about, team, portfolio, contact etc

May we see the website please?

It's hard to agree or disagree without seeing the website in question.

One could leave out any number of 'expected elements' and still produce a good user experience.

IrishExpat

KonFusion wrote: »

May we see the website please?

It's hard to agree or disagree without seeing the website in question.

One could leave out any number of 'expected elements' and still produce a good user experience.

Unfortunately, this project (like most of my work) is under a white-label contract, and I can't send a link for that specific reason.

But I'll post a few example links once I round a few up.

OctavarIan

I'd be guilty of this as well. Trying to fit the client's content into these conventions instead of stepping back and designing for the content itself.

One specific element that I think is a good example is the usual 'about us' or 'bio' page. It's usually an incredibly impersonal and difficult to read block of text with maybe a generic photograph. Boring as hell. I've seen some Facebook brand pages though that have gorgeous looking timelines of a brand's history and it's a FAR more informative and entertaining experience. I realise not every company has access to an archive of data or photography but try something creative.

I really like Intercom's company page for example.