Have a look at the image below. It’s a screenshot from a relatively popular business website in Finland. I’ve marked the content in pink. Am I the only one to notice that there’s slightly too much noise in there in the form of advertisements and other widgets and gimmicks?
I’m sure they’ve managed to capitalise on the traffic very well with regard to media sales, but how sustainable is the traffic in the long run (or even in the short run)?
Money is important, there’s no doubt about that. However, I do feel there are some principles editors of websites should keep in mind. In this case the content becomes unfindable and thus makes the reader work twice as hard.
Then again - as an advertiser, I don’t see the website that appealing when there are about 10 other advertisements already grasping for the reader’s attention.
This is one of the reasons why I love AdBlock & Firefox. Here’s an alternative view of the same page: http://www.groundswell.fi/sim/wp-content/upload/tsanomat-mod.png
While the same terrible layout is still very apparent, at least the signal-to-noise ratio is a bit better (not that TalousSanomat would have that good content to begin with, but you get the drift).
Also, remember that from many advertisers’ perspective the page even in its original format is 100% content, no noise. After all, the ads are welcome, valuable targeted information to the customers. Or so they like to think :)
Posted by Sami on March 22nd, 2007.
I think I might have to install AdBlock myself :)
Posted by Antti on March 25th, 2007.