Looks like a hundred million other sites…

DId you Join the Ridiculous Ranks of the Stupid IAB…

Clones and Drones…

Dress the same, talk the same, walk the same…

Fire the Guy In Charge!

but, generally speaking, i think we’re really getting locked into certain types of wireframes/grids that are creatively limiting. blogs are blogs, but professionally produced broadcast and other news/feature/current event sites –especially magazines– could really blow up the modular boxes.

there is the everpresent yahoo creep, but I think many sites have been heavily influenced by nytimes.com, and thusly by khoi vin’s earlier treament at theonion.com. check out time.com and even the new usnews.com - pretty much the same approach.

now, let’s nod to safran and the growing RSS mob who are infosnacking their way through multiple sites on their daily surf through the news. my own personal experience, on my public focused news sites, i’m seeing anywhere between 80 and even 90 percent of my traffic never touching the main index. i employ a purposeful SEO and viral-only marketing strategy with no branding campaign, so my traffic is coming from engines, aggregators, and rss readers just like any other garage/grunge site.

so, what i am starting to miss in this sea of aggregated text and unbundled design elements is the power of images and elegant packaging on index pages. in fact, i get practically nothing from visiting MSM home pages. i expect newspapers to be a cluttery in their index page design as long time aggregators, but I hope magazines can remember what bold and elegant image-oriented cover design did for them. i hope broadcast sites find new ways to focus their index pages on teasers and montages and use editorial selectivity to create refreshing, comforting, and engaging experiences before hitting a table of contents.

i’m not just talking about 300 pixel wide flash slide shows stuck in the middle of a sea of text and links. take over the whole screen and play your text with care. this would create a different value and experience for the home page visit and help differentiate products based upon the core strength of the content. professional content can be differentiated from mob content by presentation logic. you can still allow them to skip the intro, and you can still allow them to hit a personalized page too.

take heed of rosenblum’s why the tv news sucks post, it all looks the same and there is no courage to blow up conventions. then go look at cbc radio 3’s outstandingly well designed site. i love how espn.com takes over their whole page with one current, killer image during live blowout coverage of major games. think about seth gitner’s incredibly cool job ad, Curley’s onBeing interface, and then ask yourself, why is that kind of presentation not being used front and center every day on home pages? Before you answer, you may want to read Jarvis’ recent focus on what you do best and link the rest post.

if we bury the best work of our multimedia designers and developers and are using flash only as a tv player, we are selling our potential and the potential of the medium short. sure, tell me your focus group and heat map stories about where the eyballs go. yeah, i know your CMS is really limiting and your designers hate it. but did you ever really give your focus group a truly alternative design? and can’t you really hack around your cms’ default index page and do device and browser detects?

man, my comments are getting more robust than my posts. but i just don’t think i can put this one in a post, becuase i don’t want to write a headline that says “index pages pretty much suck,” but the more I type, the more I think they do. maybe we should try to lead with jab and then follow up with the haymaker like pugilists instead of trying to punch everything at once like amateur street fighters.

Having said that, I know the power of the shiny bell and the colorful ball of yarn. I look forward to playing in the USA Today sandbox.