good web site design practices

hi all
im doing an assingment at the mo about website usability and practice
what i've been told is that website should be simple(google) and to the point not complicated and crowded (jakob nielson's theory) but most websites of major corps /popular websites which have millions of visitors do not compliy ith the view of complicity eg bbc co.uk /hotmail /amazon
i've found some papers on the subject already ,does anyone know of any other good sites that can explain why the above sites can still get the number of visitors they do when they dont comply to the simple theory.

 

There is no other way to display the quantity of information that these sites offer. Therefore, they must follow a relative path of simplicty to complexity. Add to that the fact that a majority of the sites like Amazon are not informational sites. They are e-commerce sites and advertisment is key.

The key to a successful website is navigation. If you can make your site easy to navigate regardless of the volume of content, then the visitor typically has no problem. I think most of the big sites do a relatively decent job of making navigation easy. With the exception of IBM and Microsoft.

 

Microsoft navigation is sucky to say the least.

Website design is all about presenting information in an accessable and easily searchable way. No two sites are the same in that respect.

 

i agree with kodo. however, i also feel that the websites that have been mentioned are long established websites and have been in the public mindset for a while now. people gravitate toward sites that always have had high amounts of traffic. like mall zombies - they don't know why, they just do it - regardless of the amount of crap thats there. keep in mind that msn, amazon, ebay - they all understand the concept of design simplicity vs complexity. they also understand that millions of people visit their sites on a daily basis, so regardless if they throw lots of junk on their home pages, they know that their regular customers will know enough by now to navigate - at the same time new potential customers will make the attempt to learn the site (or be left in the dust as "uncool" or not "net savvy" enuff - who wants to be that?).

snake

 

many thanks to all of you for replying and giving your thoughts

mucho appreciated http://forums.majorgeeks.com/images/icons/icon14.gif