{"id":44648,"date":"2020-10-28T15:33:17","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T15:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.glassmountains.co.uk\/?p=44648"},"modified":"2021-01-30T11:28:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T11:28:05","slug":"fivethirtyeight-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glassmountains.co.uk\/campfire\/fivethirtyeight-com\/","title":{"rendered":"FiveThirtyEight.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not often then I visit a website, especially on mobile, which really turns my head. But that’s exactly<\/em> what happened when I visited https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/\"

Fig 1 – https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/ desktop<\/p><\/div>\n

Above is the desktop view but, as I say, I first visited it on my mobile:<\/p>\n

\"Fig.

Fig. 2 – https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/ mobile<\/p><\/div>\n

So, what impressed me here?<\/h2>\n

My positive impression was instant so I need to try<\/em> and unpick that to understand the reasoning behind it.<\/p>\n

It seemed<\/em> to load quickly<\/h3>\n

Note: when I tested this later, with performance tools, the site was not particularly performant – which goes to show that humans are not good judges of decent website performance – but only aware of poor performance. However, there was obviously something about the design or experience which reflected well with me.<\/p>\n

Function & Purpose<\/h3>\n

The function\/purpose operation of the site seemed immediately seemed clear to me.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t swamped with choices. And what choices there were present were presented to me in a clear manner (I admit this is not a complex site).<\/p>\n

Fonts<\/h3>\n

The use of different fonts (families\/sizes\/colour) for various information areas really helped me quickly grasp the information layout of the page.<\/p>\n

Fig 2 does not do that justice, but if you scroll on your phone, you’ll see what I mean. I’m an old git now at 50 but even the smaller fonts were crisp and caused no issues for my glasses.<\/p>\n

Search & Menu<\/h3>\n

A prominent search, and a prominent menu button (not a hamburger icon).<\/p>\n

Don’t make me think<\/h3>\n

A clear, prominent, ‘live update area’. This box succinctly communicated to me what that area was for, and that I could click on it to find out more.<\/p>\n

Beautiful illustration<\/h3>\n

I don’t know if this illustration is bespoke to the site; perhaps they have a fantastic in-house team. Either way, it really leapt out to me. Now not all websites can afford bespoke content like that, but when you’ve got it – flaunt it.<\/p>\n

Pop-ups (1)<\/h3>\n

Pop-ups and other distractions really seem to be the bane of websites at the moment: they have their place but the maxim of ‘less is more<\/em>‘ applies.<\/p>\n

Pop-ups (2)<\/h3>\n

I didn’t see a cookie banner on the site. Now either that means the website has gone for a very minimal script\/cookie approach (ditching Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel etc, and perhaps going for something more privacy focussed like Fathom<\/a> instead) or perhaps they’ve not yet fully addressed CCPA\/GDPR etc – I’ve not dug at length on the site but it certainly looked like some sort of self-hosted analytics solutions they were using.<\/p>\n

Either way, it feels like the future of websites, a crisper user experience, involving fewer pop-ups etc & fewer things shouting<\/em> at us. If this means dialling back on the privacy challenging services a website uses then great – as that means we can lessen the impact of pop-ups like a cookie banner.<\/p>\n

Call to actions<\/h3>\n

Call to actions are the buttons or the things that you want visitors to your website to do<\/em>.<\/p>\n

With this site I was not swamped with call to actions; perhaps this plays into the Harvard study which showed that a stall selling 6 types of jam outperformed the stall selling 24 types<\/a> – too much choice causes paralysis – again, less is more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though I would say, if it were me, I might be tempted to try a little harder to get people to sign up to the newsletter – yes there is a banner on the homepage, but it was waaaay<\/em> down. I then wondered if it were more prominent on individual article pages\u00a0 – using the logic that when someone had read an article & invested more time, they would have established enough trust with the website to be ready to part with their personal information. I didn’t see a difference though.<\/p>\n

Perhaps their design choice here is subtler – perhaps they are assuming (from the fairly high brow nature of the content) that their audience is already<\/em> informed and very web savvy; and more than capable of taking the next steps (if they so wish).<\/p>\n

The counter-argument here is that “yes, but if the call to action was bigger they would get a greater conversion!”<\/em> – but perhaps that just isn’t FiveThirtyEight’s mindset. Perhaps the design mentality here was clean and simple – let the content do the work & the audience will follow.<\/p>\n

End Thoughts<\/h2>\n

Overall the design feels very minimal; perhaps this is a personal choice but this really works for me as I think it allows all the key content to ‘breath’ and not be fighting for attention. Compare that to the frustration summed up in this tweet from Simon Brew<\/p>\n

\n

Loads website.
Accepts cookies.
Closes down ad covering part of screen.
Stops auto-playing video.
No, I don't want you to send alerts to my home screen
No, you don't need to know my location.
No, I don't want your newsletter.
Closes website without reading the article I came for.<\/p>\n

— Simon Brew (@simonbrew) October 26, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n