For 19 years, I’ve been collecting screenshots of a broad range of homepages, capturing shots of each site once a year. Comparing each screenshot with its homepage the year before lets me estimate the annualized degree of change in homepage design.
Let’s start by looking at a few typical examples across my collection period.
1994 to 1995: Huge Change (Example: Microsoft)
These are classic homepages from the Web’s earliest days: highly graphical and designed without any reference to traditional GUI (graphical user interface) conventions.
It’s also typical of the early years that the homepage was fully redesigned from one version to the next. At that time, web design was so...
Experience with traditional media has shown that even media that are quite similar can have different properties and different things they are good at. Consider television, movies, and theater: all three basically show human actors in costumes who read scripts in front of stage sets. All are very
Sadly, in this case, neither search, nor navigation, nor the Population Finder led the majority of users to the correct answer. Indeed, search was particularly bad on this site. One user said, "I know where I can probably find it faster: Google," and promptly abandoned the official Census Bureau
There’s been such a push to get everything available from the cloud; as long as you have a good internet connection, you can access it. But sometimes people don’t have the internet available and still want access. Amazon Prime video and Spotify Premium understand this and are examples of
RW Q&A: Monisha Perkash, founder of Lumo Bodytech
Lumo’s wearable products are characteristically small with intelligent sensors. Perkash described the Lumo Lift, a small lapel pin that attaches to your shirt with magnets, and the Lumo Run, a tiny clip that could be attached to the waistband of your shorts. “When you slouch, the Lumo Lift
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
9 Blockchains Transforming the Way We Pay, Play, and Work
Look past digital currencies’ nosebleed pricing volatility, and you’ll discover a robust, decentralized, secure database. Brands and technologists are quickly figuring out how to put this powerful ledger to good use. Here are several real-world examples that demonstrate cryptos’
What B2B Designers Can Learn from B2C About Building Trust
GoToTraining.com: The Most Popular plan suggestion helps users who may struggle with deciding which is the best option. The page also isolates the essential difference among plans — the number of attendees that can participate in a meeting (25, 50, and 200 Attendees). However, using low-contrast
homepage design changes
Branding an Intranet
Most Intranets are created and owned by IT, HR, Corporate Communications, or a combination of these departments. While these teams have the necessary skills to create and maintain great intranets, they don’t usually include experts in branding. Thus, intranets frequently lack a brand identity. A
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Unless you have an unlimited clothes budget, it’s unrealistic (and wasteful) to wear a new outfit for every single occasion, yet social media pressures us into it. Rent a Runway solves this tension elegantly by recycling (expensive) clothes across a large set of women. It’s an example of the
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Unless you have an unlimited clothes budget, it’s unrealistic (and wasteful) to wear a new outfit for every single occasion, yet social media pressures us into it. Rent a Runway solves this tension elegantly by recycling (expensive) clothes across a large set of women. It’s an example of the
Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard
We studied the actual use of an in-house user interface standard at a medium sized Danish company which we will call The Data Company. This company is a mixture of a software house and a service bureau and supplies several software products to its customers. The software is mainly mainframe
Confirmation Dialogs Can Prevent User Errors (If Not Overused)
In graphical user interfaces, a confirmation dialog usually takes the form of a modal dialog box that pops up and must be attended to before the system will execute the user’s command. (Other interaction styles may use different formats for confirmation dialogs. For example, a voice UI might use
UX Research Cheat Sheet
User-experience research methods are great at producing data and insights, while ongoing activities help get the right things done. Alongside R&D, ongoing UX activities can make everyone’s efforts more effective and valuable. At every stage in the design process, different UX methods can keep
homepage design changes
The Mobile Checkout Experience
What distinguishes the best mobile checkout experiences from standard ones is the extra attention to detail. Mobile-focused, user-centered UI elements can help move your users through the experience with speed and ease. Though often overlooked and easily forgotten, these seemingly small design
Eartracking: A New UX-Research Method
We first became aware of the benefits of eartracking during our research with cats and dogs. Many animals have ears that visibly turn in the direction of their attention. Turning the ears is clearly an evolutionary adaptation that allows predators to keenly follow the prey and it also enables
WP Engine Raises $30K for Central Texas Food Bank
WP Engine employees are rarely hungry. Our office kitchens are fully stocked with cereal and snacks, and lunch is catered Monday through Thursday, every week, for the entire team. Unlike the 46,000 people who rely on Central Texas Food Bank for food assistance every week, our employees don’t have
StudioPress Theme Spotlight: Daily Dish Pro
As we continue to showcase a sample of the amazing StudioPress themes now available to WP Engine customers, we’re shifting our focus to food with this new StudioPress Theme: Daily Dish Pro, which is designed to make your content just as appetizing as the best meal at your favorite four-star
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: US
Last week, WP Engine employees from all over the U.S. came together at our Austin headquarters for the first biannual All-Hands event of 2019. All Hands is a two-day event in which employees from other offices and teams around the country get the chance to collaborate and strategize with one
Tabs, Used Right
If you follow the design guidelines in this article, users will know how to use your tabs without further exploration or error-prone guessing. This again means that they can devote all their time and brainpower to understanding the content and features that you’re making available under these
Date-Input Form Fields: UX Design Guidelines
Date-input patterns are not created equal. Implement design patterns that are appropriate for your context. When designing date-entry fields support text input and consider whether or not you have an international audience. Avoid designs that are ambiguous because they can cause people to become
Customer Journeys and Omnichannel User Experience
A great customer experience is the product of an effective and well-designed omnichannel ecosystem. To achieve it, organizations must research and understand the customer journeys that users take as they complete tasks across devices and channels. To every single customer, a journey is one holistic
Data Lake vs. Data Warehouse: Which Is the Best Data Architecture?
Complicating things further is the “data marketplace.” Unlike the first two concepts, this isn’t an architecture but rather an interface to a data lake that enables those outside of the IT team, such as business analysts, to its contents. Through a search function, it allows users
homepage design changes
Security Teams Need to Be Prepared With an Incident Response Plan
Europe’s GDPR legislation has a section attempting to provide some standardization for incident response, but those guidelines only provide a starting point for organization-specific plans. CISOs and their teams face too many variable questions to depend on cut-and-paste plans. If the company
We get Smarter with the Internet of Things (IoT) and so do Cities
Using smart education applications helps engage people in active learning environment. All these allow learners to adapt to rapid changes in the environment and society. In addition, relying on big data that has been collected and processed in the field will help to generate required information
Homepage Design Changes | Here is Why Your Business Should Take Digital Adoption Seriously
Here is Why Your Business Should Take Digital Adoption Seriously
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We live in an increasingly digital world. We shop, make appointments, order food and taxis, and document our lives online. Approximately 70 percent of us use social media to connect and share content, and most spend an astonishing four hours per day interacting with our smartphones. Deep learning
5 Ways Blockchain Startups Can Appeal to Enterprises
yaugen
A well-designed governing body has the incentive to improve the network, grow the network, and create a fair return for all users. Fair return is only possible, though, if the network has rules for data management, code management, and node control as early as possible. It can only grow if everyone
Secrets of Financial Applications: Traits of Fintech Apps
mariya
Two-factor authentication is a good way of securing digital accounts. Two-factor authentication is the most widely-used security measure for these types of applications. Third party services such as Twilio Verify or Twilio Authy allow verification via SMS or a unique app that the user installs on
