I believe that website design must be aimed at simplicity above all else, with as few distractions as possible, with very clear information and navigational tools. Website usability suffers dramatically as soon as the visitors move off the homepage and start navigating through the site. For example, most of the time, logo animations accompanied with sound files are unnecessary, and many designers now advise against it for many reasons: they slow down users trying to get to the homepage; they sometimes require plug-ins; they are often ignored by search engines; they can be annoying and frustrating to users; and they drive up the cost of the website.
In this busy world we’re in, the average visitor will only wait about 15-20 seconds for a webpage to load before impatiently moving on to another website that will load faster without all those bells and whistles to slow it down!
When I design a website, every image, text paragraph, and media object is there for a reason, not just to fill in space, or to show off a special effect.
