Learn from the best websites of today’s top publishers
We are giving away more free content. All 76 of our Website Design Reviews, formerly part of the members-only Mequoda Library, are now available to everyone.
So what are they and what can be learned from them?
Website Design Reviews are written by the Mequoda Research Team, based on our Website Design Scorecard that features 14 website design guidelines, and focuses on the websites of today’s top publishers.
To create the 14 website design guidelines, we’ve reviewed hundreds of websites and interviewed dozens of website publishers. We’ve conducted a series of expert usability reviews and actual user tests to determine what we believe to be the top 14 best practices for successful website publishing.
- Strategic Intent, or Purpose – clearly indicates the action to be taken
- Content Webification – innovative use of interactivity and multimedia technology
- Relationship Building – aggressively invites visitors to receive content via email
- Community Building – clearly invites visitors to become involved with other members
- Persistent Navigation – does an excellent job at letting user fulfill goals
- User Task Depth – test user was able to complete all four tasks
- Affordance – links and buttons clearly do what they “afford”
- Labeling and Language (lexicon and taxonomy) – is audience centric, has good representation of key words and phrases
- Readability (Content Density) – uncluttered, adequate white space, column width, type size and face
- Organization – marketing quadrants are appropriately exploited, navigation OK
- Content Freshness – new content is available throughout the day
- Load Time – under 15 seconds on 56K for text, low graphic load
- Aesthetics – supports the purpose of the site, is consistent with user’s mental model
- Brand Preference – clearly supports and builds brand preference and encourages return visits
[text_ad]
The Mequoda Research Team has reviewed and graded more than 70 websites over the last five years. Since the internet is constantly changing, some websites may look very different now. Therefore, we have included links and screenshots at the time each review was written. Here are the top ten website designs based on the above criteria. All of the other reviews can be found by visiting our Website Design Reviews page.
- BHG.com – A 386
- Atkins.com – A 386
- Craigslist.org – A 379
- Morningstar.com – A 371
- WebMD.com – A 371
- DailyReckoning.com – A 371
- Ecomomist.com – A 371
- CreditToday.net – A 371
- Firehouse.com – A 364
- EarlyToRise.com – A 364
- DeniseAustin.com – A 364
We hope you can learn from these successful online publishers and come to implement some of these features into your own website design. Learn more about website design at the next Mequoda Summit.
