Page design FAIL

[joel]

Unfortunately getting the full effect requires having a login, but take a look at the e-incode site. Now, imagine that there are now half a dozen drop-down menus across the top instead of two, and that the left sidebar is filled past the bottom of the screen with navigation links (both presented reasonable sanely, mind you). Last of all, imagine that the content seen on the login page is all still there, but there is enough additional content above it to push the images to the bottom of the page.

Now try to find the training site link.

Fail #1 (minor/arguable): having both top bar and side bar navigation is usually confusing to the user. There are ways to make it work, but this site doesn't really do them properly.

Fail #2 (significant): neither the top bar nor the side bar have a link to the training site, despite the fact that it is a fairly major destination for folks coming to this page, *and* the fact that many folks looking for it will be coming to this page *for the first time*.

Fail #3 (significant, but compounded with #2 becomes FAIL): making the training link a graphic that is the same size, shape, *and* position on the screen (for normal-size screens) as a banner ad, *and* occurs below a "demo" graphic of the same type that *says* "demo" near the left-hand side (thus making it look even more like a banner ad).

It literally took me ten minutes to find the stupid thing, because I have (like so many others on the 'Net today) a strong mental filter / "blind spot" to catch banner ads. I literally *did not see it*. Yes, the photons went from the screen to my eyes, and I'm fairly sure my optic nerve continued to work, but the "front end" pattern recognition in my brain that turns a visual signal into meaning information -- the act of "seeing" -- filtered it out of my perception. Entirely. To the point that when I finished hunting every obvious place on the page I *still* didn't see it.

I had to go check the email a couple of times, and be sure I was in the right spot, and think about the unlikelyhood of them not having *some* training link on the front page, before I went back and started looking at the page in a very deliberate "item by item" search. Even then I almost skipped over it.