These hopefully shimmering pages were created by John Borchard ("jb") who takes the blame for constructing and maintaining all these sites as well ...
What should I do with this list?, You might well ask. How to compare other
peoples’ websites to tell how good (or bad) a webmaster is? My suggestion:
look fast but not hard. Click some of the links at random.
Do the sites
look all the same or different? If they are all the same, then a webmaster
just does sites “like those”, so unless you want one "just like that", (s)he will be unable to adjust
to your aesthetics.
Do the sites generally look pleasant in the first 3 seconds,
or irritating, confusing, annoying? First impressions are perhaps more
important on the web than anywhere else. You have no doubt heard the statistics,
96.4% of people hitting a page click away from it in the first 0.005 seconds
(or some such). Well, it’s pretty much true. The Internet has serious ADD.
Is the page itself intriguing? Even
if you are not interested in the product or art or whatever that a site is
pushing on you, is there something (besides desperation born in boredom) that got you to click a link or two on the
page? That’s what you want. If the sites are all the same and you are
bored (or irritated) to tears, there's no need to psychoanalyze it. Find another webmaster who's more your style!
