Components of an Anime Site

[Popster]

The question here is not what makes an anime website great, but rather what do you look for in an anime website? There are so many sites out there of various shapes and sizes, all with varying degrees of success in terms of popularity. It is easy to say that you look for x, y and z in a site, but then head off to another offering illegal fansub downloads and stolen copyright images.

Personally, I love a site that is low on flash, high on quality. Sites like ANN, The Anime Review and even our own Anime UK News are perfect examples of this. They are not clogged up with superfluous information or hide a lack of quality and quantity with a garish layout. At the same time however, they offer plenty of nice little extras such as images, trailers and these very forums.

I’m not saying sites that have a fancy layout are all bad, just that in my experience the less time spent on design and the more spent on content, the better.

So what do other members think?

 

[Melainy]

In some areas I agree, but there's something to be said for design. There's not much point in great content if nobody is drawn in to read it!

I think layout is very important, as well as colour scheme, and a consistancy throughout the pages - that show signs of professionalism and that the webmasters know what they're doing. I would look for the quality of the web page before deciding to read any of the content.

 

[Paul]

I'm a big fan of text heavy sites, but an impressive design is also essential. Like Melainy says, there's no point in producing quality content if no one is compelled to read it in the first place. It's not really a matter of being great a graphic designer either, a site just has to be easy to navigate and unique enough to be eye catching; to this end, a pleasing colour scheme is essential- especially for content sites.

I often admire blog layouts, they encapsulate my love of layout symplicity (often with great manipulation of text) with some interesting navigation and colour schemes.