Coding Horror has written about the importance of grids when it comes to designing websites. Several examples demonstrating grid layout techniques are included. One of them being the Yahoo! Personals home page.
What I found interesting, besides why grids are important, was the stark differences between the Y! Personals home page depending on whether you are logged into Yahoo! or not.
Y! Personals Home Page – Not Signed In. Looks ok. Pleasing to look at. Nice and clean and no ads.
Yahoo! Personals Home Page – Member View. Ugh, what happened? Junky rollover ads front and center that take over the screen. Same old ugly layout that hasn’t changed in years. What’s the deal here? Reel them in with a beautiful home page the force members to look at a a five year old design. Compared to the drastic changes happening with Match, Y! Personals looks old and tired.
The rest of the article goes into detail about designing websites using grids. The sites they link to are helpful and gorgeous to look at.
This really wasn’t a critique, but go ahead and look at the home pages and member home pages of a handful of dating sites. The range of layouts, emphasis on certain content and overall usability is incredible to behold as an end user.
The owner of a popular dating site recently shared that they had never belonged to a dating site. Is that reality for most dating site CEO’s? I can’t imagine not keeping a sharp eye on what competitors are doing.
