Many people may think that the homepage design of a portal website is just to put some navigation, information content, and advertisement together in a good-looking manner. Although this viewpoint is not completely wrong, it is true that the homepage of a portal website is organized by these three aspects. However, with the rapid development of the Internet, users have higher and higher requirements for accessing websites, because many things are free and similar, the user transfer cost will be relatively low, and some things on this website can basically be found on other websites, just enter a URL. If website operators want to retain users and attract more users to visit their websites, they need to improve the user experience of the website to meet the diversified needs of users. Therefore, the design of portal websites is becoming more and more important to users. The most ideal Portal design process requires the steps of "user research-interaction design-Visual Design-availability testing, in fact, there are many portal website designs that will also go through some of these steps, but the company has not yet had a good understanding of this aspect, and there is no system calling method and detailed functional division of labor, most of them are determined by subjective judgment based on personal experience, without some objective data support. For example, some website Planners often say: I am also one of the website users. I have no need to use this function, and other users should have no need to delete it. If there is an objective analysis data at this time, you will know whether the user has this requirement. Although it is impossible for us to support all objective data, we can at least extend it to other designs based on objective data. Next we will analyze the design ideas of Netease website from several aspects:
I. Architecture 1. The home page of the website is a battle for the military. Every channel owner wants to recommend their own products or information in a conspicuous position to increase their exposure. He always wants to make everything visible to users at once, but in the end, we found that the more things you put, the more users could not find what they wanted, and it was very likely to leave quickly. Portal websites in China are used to having a lot of information, long pages, and everything is piled up on the home page. The more content, the more intense the display, but the user's patience is limited, therefore, webpage permeability is very important to Chinese websites. The architecture changes on each screen should not be too large. If appropriate, the primary and secondary content information must be consistent, otherwise, users need to re-interpret the architecture every time they browse to the next screen and think about how to start reading from there, not only will the user's patience be exhausted, but also increase the user's browsing costs, therefore, the architecture of the website homepage must be clear and clear, so as to maintain a good permeability and reduce the browsing costs of users. For example, the Netease Homepage uses a three-bar structure. The left column provides the Netease special product portal for the navigation recommendation area, and the middle column is the main information area, providing fast, comprehensive, and dynamic news and information, the right column shows special columns such as blogs and forums. The content and attributes in each column are clear, so that users can quickly find the information they need to browse smoothly without extra consideration. According to research and analysis, the user's webpage view is generally a browsing habit from left to right, from top to bottom. Netease's website architecture is also being improved in this direction to continuously improve user experience. The Netease information page can be roughly divided into three types of architecture, which is the visual trend of the three types of architecture. Netease homepage adopts the first architecture. The homepage of each channel, such as news, sports, and entertainment, adopts the second architecture. The final page of news adopts the third architecture. In this way, users can maintain a unified visual orientation. No matter which page they browse, users know that the information they need is there. This meets the user's browser habits and reduces browsing costs.
Ii. Style I believe that most people like Apple products very much. Why are Apple products so popular? Apart from brand influence, simple and stylish design and interface design, it is also one of the reasons for popularity. in Apple's product design, there is no additional things, and each line is meaningful. In the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy, there are many works of high artistic realm, which are exceptionally expressive (such as the bamboo stone of Zheng Yi and the mero shrimp of Qi Weng ). Although website design cannot be called an artistic creation, designing the best works with the least elements is also one of the goals pursued in website design. There is no need to use two lines to show the effect with one line. images are not needed to express the effect with text. If too many decorative elements are used in the page design, the download speed of the page will be slow, and the patience of netizens will not be overestimated. Most netizens are impatient. When browsing a large amount of information, a simple and unblocking interface is required. Excessive colors and decoration will distract the user's attention, affecting the user's browsing effect and reducing the number of clicks on information. What users need to see on the website is the information content and services provided by the website, rather than the fancy Decoration (except for personal product websites ). This is one of the reasons why Netease portal has always followed the concise style. For example, the newly revised Netease news breaks the previous frame and removes unnecessary line frames. The interface is clearer and more concise, and the information content is more prominent. The yaho news of two well-established foreign portal websites using concise styles uses the three-dimensional effect design, and the time is based on the line design, the two give people the feeling that they are concise, clear, and have no extra things. They both highlight the information content and have no loss of beauty. The target audience of each portal website is different, which may also lead to different portal website style positioning. For example, if the target audience is younger, the design style may be biased towards multiple colors and functions, however, portal websites with a relatively large audience age have the opposite design style. However, no matter what the design style is, it is necessary to maintain a clear and convenient user interface.
3. Information Layout The homepage of a portal website generally carries a large amount of information. The dense information will compress users when they browse the Web page. How to make smooth browsing becomes an important part of the design. You can compare the following two information la S. The number of information entries is the same, but the first information la s make you feel that the information is clear. However, the 2nd images will make users feel overwhelmed by information la S, and may not be able to read them until they start reading them (except for users with high loyalty, but such users are relatively few after all ). Therefore, when the information is arranged to reach a certain number of rows, you need to use some blank space for visual isolation to make the visual feel breathable.
Iv. Visual Sequence Every day, news is divided into key and non-key points, and there are new and old points (old is only relative). Most users want to see the most important points first and then not important, when you look at the new and then look at the old order, the website designer needs to guide the user in the visual design, as shown in an Information Section, there will be the first visual area, the second visual area, and the third visual area, that is, when the user sees this information section, the first eye will fall into the image position, and the second eye will fall into the big title, 3rd eyes will fall into other places. In this way, user browsing can be guided in sequence to reduce users' browsing costs and increase the visual effect of the page. In this information section, 1st of visual and 2nd of visual effects may be converted to visual effects due to material selection. The visual impact of visual effects based on common sense is greater than that of text, however, when the image materials used are not optimal, they will also be attracted by text.
5. Highlights Portal websites in China have the characteristics of multiple pages with long information. When users need to browse more information at the bottom of the page, you may need to pull to the top of the page to navigate to other pages. This is a laborious project. Generally, the portal provides a "back to the top" function, the newly revised Netease channel page provides a navigation bar corresponding to the header at this location, which can be achieved without the user clicking twice. For example, I have briefly analyzed the design ideas of the homepage from several aspects. I believe there are still many shortcomings, but we will keep exploring and trying, provide a user-friendly network platform for netizens. At this stage, the domestic Internet industry is still far away from some developed countries, especially when the user experience of websites is still in the exploratory stage, and Chinese people are constantly improving the comfort requirements for browsing websites, therefore, improving the user experience of a website is the future direction of website design. However, because the user experience is purely subjective, there are certain uncertainties. Individual Differences also determine that the real experience of each user cannot be completely simulated or reproduced through other paths. However, for a clearly defined user group, the commonality of user experience can be realized through well-designed experiments.
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