Ryan Merket’s Blog

Today I was reading through some startup blogs, and found a link to Fanista.com. See design below:

The first thing that catches my eye about this design are the Featured entertainment section on the right side. After I play with that area for a few seconds I try to figure out what the site is about — but the diagonal text hurts my eyes to try to read.

Not only does the diagonal text hard to read, but the kerning of the text gets distorted, making the text even harder to read. If you are trying to pull users in by informing them what your site is all about, then you need to be sure that the copy is can be easily scanned and not use descriptives such as “indulge your passion”, and headline it with what makes sense, “What is Fanista?”.

The next issue I have with this design is the fact that the items on the right have no names next to them. Users are forced to hover over the items to figure out what they are, and when they perform said action there is nothing for them to do except “Send to a friend”. Once you ask your user, especially new users to perform an action, you better have some “gold at the end of the rainbow”.

So what is the user supposed to do? Drag the icons to the little dock below the items? I did that, now what? There is nothing, as it seems, that I can do with the items once I drag them down to the cork board. Why even have it vying for my attention?

After looking over the page, it became very apparent that the Fanista designer is trying to get the user to do 2 main actions on the page. Drag on the items on the cork board, which ultimately does nothing, or be forced to read diagonal text, that hopefully leads the user down to a little button:

This leads us to the point of the page… If the point of the page is to try to 1st: Educate the user, and then 2nd: Acquire the user. Then don’t waste precious time on site with a drag and drop gimmick. Spell out exactly what the site is in clear readable copy, and then make the next action clear as day.