OF INTEREST

The problem with portals

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Wikipedia: "A web portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way."

Lately, probably because of the proliferation of social networking sites such as facebook, myspace, twitter etc, we are seeing more and more sites start with a graphic presentation of links, that are being dubbed "portals." Not usually ones to buck the web trends, we have come to feel, that in their current usage, these social portal pages are a bad idea for the following reasons.

1. Most of them are in Flash

Many web designer still don't know that flash sites are invisible to Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines as well as iPhones and other smartphones. That means that a web crawler finding your site at www.slabpad.com where there is a portal to the rest of your site and all your social links, will find a blank page and stop. Same goes for your iPhone, G1 phone, blackberry or other smartphone visitors. The flash shows up as a big fat blank with nowhere to find your content. You lost them before they ever entered your site.

2. Most of them take too long to load.

It can seem like a great idea to showcase your favorite music, as you slowly fade in a hi-resolution, full screen image of your face, and each of the buttons on your portal spiral in from a different corner of the screen. However, since you will need a progress to show up before all of that bandwidth, it will take anywhere between 6 and 20 seconds before your visitor can click on something. In browsing time, 10 seconds is roughly the amount of time it took to build the great pyramids of Egypt. By the time your visitor has waited for the same old effects for the 11th time, they will have decided never to visit your site again, and really, would you blame them?

3. Portal Pages are content poor.

Links to your affilliated sites are nice, but they are just as effective if presented as small buttons on a page full of information as they are on a pretty page with no information. Many people never get past the first page they see on your site, so shouldn't you make that page count? For example, if you have 25 widgets to sell, but you have a new widget out today, and are going to be on the radio to talk about them, it's important that your tweets are seen, but you also can highlight your new widget on your homepage with links to more details so visitors are drawn in, not away to another site.

What you should consider before using a portal as your landing page.

First, what are you trying to accomplish with the portal page? Be honest with yourself, and ask if it's just for your own ego, or if it's adding convenience for your visitors, or essential to your brand. Be sure you don't turn off as many visitors as you turn on.
Second, will your visitors get past your portal page? If you are using flash, have you thought of alternate non-flash code that will accomodate search engines and iPhones?
Third, could you incorporate the links into the header, navigation, or subnavigation of your site and have the same effect in promoting your social network? Could you include your actual tweets into your site so that visitors get a sense of your public proclamations as they eye your widgets. Remember, most people scan a page searching about for something to click on until they've found content that interests them.

Your site should work in harmony with the meandering habits of site visitors, rather than try to capture their full attention for 10 second aeons before giving them a choice with very little information to back it up. This wears down the visitor's patience, and helps you not at all.

That's our 2.