Critique of Web designs

C/Net

Cole: Let's go to my last site. C/Net is a television show on the Science Fiction Network. It's available three or four different times on cable, and it's a TV show about technology, computers and on-line. As you can see, it too, registers people, but it does not limit access because of the registration. What I find very encouraging about the C/Net site is that it mixes not only the content of the TV show, but also a wealth of just general computer information. They have a shareware area. They have reviews of CD-ROMS and applications. They have a chat area. Ninety percent of this material is not related to the TV show. It extends off of the TV show, but it is not actually out there with the show itself. As you can see, this is a page we didn't pre-load. So you can come in and take a look at lists of CD-ROM titles that John Dvorak and some of the other reviewers have picked. I like the notion of using the TV show as a jumping off point. The people at C/Net see it as a holistic thing. The TV show is just one component. The Web site is just one component. They're very interested in using the technology, not only for interactivity -- they have some chat areas -- but they're very comfortable with expressing themselves in either video or on the Web site. I find this to be a very, very good Web site. I'm really entranced with it. I spend a lot of time here personally. Rosalind?

Resnick: I agree with you David. It's hard to argue with a site like puts together so many good things in one place and let's people explore it. It's interesting because, as I was saying before, I think that print publications are handicapped because they came from the world of print. I think it's interesting for print publishers to be aware that not only are print newspapers and magazines going on-line, but TV shows are going on-line as well. From what I've seen of CNN and C/Net today, I think that they're doing a better job than print publishers in fully utilizing the resources of the Web.

Seybold: I think the thing that's really interesting here is that they view these as complementary media that support each other, and are trying to do well in video what they can do in video and trying to do well on the Web, what they can do on the Web. That is where we have to be going. My biggest objection to this, and this is less of a problem than I have with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is that it seems to me that there's a ton of other material that they could be pointing to that they're not, and they should be giving you more links to things outside their own site.

Resnick: Jonathan, one point I'd like to make here is that there is a reason why publishers (and when I say publisher, I mean both newspaper and magazines) and TV stations are hesitant about putting too many links on their site. They're concerned you'll click on a link and never come back. That's one of the problems C/Net is having. You know, the big newsstand pull CD Ziff-Davis Publications. They have all kinds of links to computer sites, and while that is definitely in the best tradition of the Web, and certainly makes the site richer for users, they're trying to find a way to keep those readers back on the farm. They want to prevent them from surfing the greater Web so that they stay within the fold. That certainly serves their purpose in selling advertisers.

Seybold: I'd be curious in terms of any real studies about this, because it seems to me that what you want first of all is for people to start with your site, for that to be the reference from which they work. It's not difficult to backtrack, particularly if you're using the better browsers like Netscape, because they give you the ability to go back to where you came from. I would be curious as to whether there any real tracking studies that would say that people come into their site, go off and never come back. I suspect that people, if they do that, would come back tomorrow to their site and do the same thing over again, so they're still going through the site.

Resnick: I don't know, what about you?

Cole: It seems to me that what we've got here are two kind of interesting notions, and I fall closer to Jonathan. You have a tendency to really surf. You just go from one site to another to another to another -- and I'm not criticizing that as a way to go through the Web -- but I think there are other people, more like Jonathan and myself, who have a tendency to go into a site and yes, we'll pick a link off, but we'll come back to the site, because we want to know why did these people pick these links? What are the links, why did they pick them? I agree with you completely that we're really talking about an issue of editorial decision making, as far as what kinds of links you put up.

Seybold: Look at how hard it is. There's so much stuff on the Net already, and it's growing exponentially. It's going to be harder and harder for us to find our way around. Most of what you wander into isn't worth the time you spent wandering into it. Therefore, you're going to value more and more, editorial places you can go that give you links to other things. Look at how popular the HotPages-CoolPages kind of things are. People use those all the time, because it gives them a chance to look at something that someone else has sort of pre-selected for them. It seems to me that if you're interested in a particular topic, the site that is going to be most valuable to you is the one that has editorial content and a point of view of its own, and also pulls together selections that people have done of all the other stuff that's available on the Net relevant to that topic. That's going to be a place you're going to mark as a primary access point on the Net.

Resnick: To a certain extent, it's a matter of new users versus more experienced users. New users tend to spend three or four hours a night until they're totally bleary eyed, surfing the net, going from site to site, seeing how many they can surf. Ultimately people find their favorite sites, bookmark them and keep going back. It's critical for publishers not only to provide links to other sites, but to make sure they, as the publishers, get on all these what's new, what's cool, what's hot kind of sites, so people are linking back to them. The key to success for any on-line publication, just like any on-line service, whether on the Internet or not, is building a community. Of the reasons why, one of the things Feed magazine is trying to do, in addition to providing some glossy looking text and editorial content, is build a community of literary minded people. That's what's going to keep people coming back again and again.

Seybold: It's time to open things up for questions, comments, objections, opinions.

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