less is more web design
- Started
- Last post
- 13 Responses
- heavyt
i am in the beginning stages of designing a commerce site.
there are around 10,000 products carried on this site.
the current perspective of the guys in charge is to show as much product on any given page at once. there are products in the middle, on the right, on the left at the bottom.
i guess the thinking is that a customer may see something that they want if we show them enough different things.
i am more into the "less-is-more" philosophy where we preserve white space at the sacrifice of showing more products.
i also want to change their minds regarding colours. they also seem to want a lot of different colours on the site.
personally, i would like to stick to 10 or less colours.
anybody got an opinion on this stuff? or some good URLs that support your opinion?thanks,
TR1
- meok0
when asking a question. Less is definitly more.
as for your question.
http://www.compusmart.com/
- nu0
I think its always better to stay away from the MSN, Amazon, Yahoo type of sites.
They always try and get everything on the main page. Its dissapointing that so many people try and go for that. It can be overwhelming to see so many things at one time.
I think it would be better to give people a better ability to search and find products easier than just throw it all in their face at one time.
- REDWOOD0
its better that the information comes with as many as possible at one page, because people get tired of browsing a 100 of pages. I agree with the opinion of the colors.
CYA
- heavyt0
LoL. i was a bit wordy.
- Bluejam0
When you walk into a supermarket you don't see everything at once. The beauty is in the organisation of things. If the site architecture and navigation work (as they should) then the need to 'see everything' will be a hinderance rather than benefical.
- bob0
Maybe Apple's Store would be an example.
Less then 10 colors, tons of white space, terrific spacing, clean look...
- iDp0
Well, I happen to be able to enjoy the pleasure of working for one of these slam 200 products onto the home page type companies..but then something happened...we redesigned it, and now its pretty ...I'll tell you if the stock goes up or down. As far as I know our stock is going up and the new site was up about 5 weeks ago. www.pcmall.com The old design was really busy and overwhelming..so if you want to push your point use us.
- heavyt0
pcmall.com is looking better. that is similar to the direction that i would like to go also.
one problem though;
the JS dropdown submenus dont work on a site that is aligned center.
if you notice, the nav buttons move, but the location of the corressponding submenu is absolute.
if anybody has designed a way to move the positions of those, i wanna know about it.
TR1
- jpowell0
clean site for a native american food company, (all naturally grown on a reservation.)
the owner didn't want a pushy, in your face site... the product page is actually kind of deep in the site.
- North_20
This is a brilliant example of alot of content/product handled in a simple and restraining manner. The approach should reflect the experience of perhaps visiting an actual store, so bombarding the customer will only scare them off.
I believe in a reductionist approach to design, the "white space" I believe gives people time think and absorb the information, thus making the experience memorable, and ultimatley a sale more likely.
Good luck, I think we all know that clients can be wankers :)
- JazX0
yeah there are a lot, like even http://www.ikea.com and such, less is nice
- iodine740
It can be done, but you'll need some pretty good javascripting skills to do it.
You'll need to write a function that repositions the menu, based on the position of the parent element, just before you change it's visibility.