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The last post, (apart from being a great trumpet tune), mentioned some of the great design addendums that was on Amnesty's site, but what about the layout? As a Web 2.0 site or even those old static pages from days gone by, a nice layout is always going to be an essential element in attracting hits on your site. In this age of short attention spans who's got time to search everywhere for navigation, or essential information that is hiding in some arcane part of your website?
As we can see above, Amnesty has a very standard corporate type of layout that is so often employed these days. Why is it so often employed? Because, it is about simplicity and ease of use. It is obvious to most anyone, even in the small picture above, exactly where the navigation bar is, where the logon is, the video is where you would expect it, it is all just so obvious.....wait a minute, that's just like another awesome site I recall reading......you guessed it, this one.
If you consider the website from the adage that "users add value" as this is the rally call for Web 2.0, you can see that Amnesty's site makes a lot of concessions toward this principle. I say concessions because Web 2.0 is very much new business approach which will require radical shifts in some industry professionals ways of thinking. However, we all know that Amnesty is a charity organisation and their motivations to encourage visitation may be different to those of a business.
That said, the Amnesty site is full of nice and Web 2.0 friendly things that are chock full of users adding value. Lets list 'em, after that we can take a closer look.
Yes, there are a lot of features, but the thing I like about it is that, while you can become a member, you don't have to be one to access all the features and content of the site, and to me, that is what Web 2.0 is all about. Simple easy convenience, which would make a nice segue into the layout and navigation, but I feel a new post coming on.
Hopefully you have determined by now that this really isn't a site from, or even about what Amnesty International does. No, this blog is actually about how well Amnesty is positioned to receive Matts green tick of approval regarding their Web Design. Hooray! I hear you all scream. Well, so you should because, we're not talking just any design philosophy here people, we are talking Web 2.0.
But....but isn't that just a buzzword Matt for a whole bunch of stuff that's been around for ages?..... you may well ask. And the answer is, well, kinda but NO. No, its a serious science this Web 2.0 stuff and the man with all the answers is Mr Tim O'Reilly.
So if you ask me...and clearly you have if you've made it this far, then, (A) if you're totally clueless go straight to the top of our video column for a quick definition or (B) if your slightly less clueless you can go to here for a few more defining features of our rather intoxicating subject that is WEB 2.0!
