

Paul Graham: Design for person who has their finger poised over the back button - vlisivka
http://mixergy.com/paul-graham-design/

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pclark
this best simple advice I've heard/given about design for non designers
includes:

* Keep it simple

* Pastel colors look good and are trivial to match

* Note alignment and white space

* As pg alludes, register/login top right

* Call to Action should be green (pg says red, shrug)

* Test the words. Patrick has a pretty great A/B testing library for Mixpanel.

what are yours?

~~~
tel
Content is king. Fascinating content is what actually draws customers. The
most fascinating content is short.

To best follow pg's advice here, I wouldn't suggest a laundry list of design
tricks. I'd say prototype and refine the 1-second elevator pitch of your
service. Take this and put it in bold, clean, friendly letters and images and
then design from there.

Clean design will take snapback time from 1 second to 1.5 seconds, but a
compelling message is the only thing that will make someone sit down and read
further.

(And yeah, definitely put your login in the upper right corner. Consistent UI
is almost certainly important here and it'll make your current customers
happier.)

~~~
billswift
Load content first. I get really irritated and tend to avoid sites where I get
to sit and look at ads while waiting for the content. I don't mind ads and
don't use ad blockers, but it is content that I want and that gets me to a
site.

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panacea
Like this: <http://chrismckenzie.com/> ?

~~~
bd
Don't worry pink buddy, help is on the way:

<http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/~inky/internets/epic_box.swf>

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JabavuAdams
It's okay; I disabled the back button.

~~~
jacquesm
For extra points, strip the window borders and go full-screen, that's
certainly going to get your visitors attention.

And since they can no longer see the url you can be sure they'll visit again.

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anigbrowl
Not directly relevant, but I wish someone would pass this headline to browser
designers...I am sick of hitting 'back' and then waiting for the page to
reload.

~~~
pjscott
I usually open pages in new tabs, so Ctrl-W is my back button most of the
time. I've found that it's actually easier than using the proper back button.

I guess what I really want is this:

1\. A really fast back button, and

2\. Middle-clicking on the back button opens the previous page in a new tab.
I've just discovered that Chrome does this, and I am overjoyed.

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faramarz
Why not target those people with a specific landing page? The language could
be something humorous like this:

 _"..wait, don't click the back button cause i got something to show you.."_
or _"..We're so happy that you're a new visitor, here's a coupon just for
showing up. click here to redeem your 30day trial.."_ or something like that

~~~
philwelch
That kind of stuff always comes off as scammy to me.

