Good and Bad Web Sites Examples & Etc.

But first an Introduction
I know, it's very easy to teach someone how to create a page but it's difficult to teach them how to design a page. Once, it was OK to slap any old thing up there and be done with it. Now, people look at a poorly designed site and ask, "Do we want to do business with them?" Upside magazine phrased it best when it discussed the importance of marketing: "Word of mouth, frequency of press appearances, Web site quality and the frequency and quality of advertisements all serve to create the image of a 'real company.' "I firmly believe that if a person is exposed to bad web page design they'll be less likely to use these techniques in the pages they create. People often commit the same mistakes over and over and over and over -- you get the point. By pointing out these mistakes, and being told that they are mistakes, you can avoid them when you design your web pages. Now some examples:

The Good

The Bad
There are two types of web sites. There are those web sites you date, and then...
"...there are those web sites you marry, like Yahoo! The trick is not to confuse the two."		 Chapman Capital L.L.C. We have an unnecessary splash page and once we're past that, we have a home page with a missing image and a head shot that's even scarier than the one on the Daily Sucker page .
Would Amazon.com use that design element on its site?"
It's an important question because Amazon.com has probably spent more time and money researching what worksand doesn't work on a web site than anyone. If you don't see a web design technique on Amazon.com, youprobably should follow their guidelines and not use it on your site.
 		 You'd think Aiwa would have a better home page. It sucks.
I realize you can make an excuse for having a splash page because of all the different languages they support (which is very impressive), but they don't need to do it in Flash and they really should explain what happens when you click "play in aiwaworld."
I don't know if they're using any clever Flash techniques to load the file into multiple parts, but it's 2.4Mb.
To put it bluntly, the web is "Wham. Bam. Thank you Ma'am." People don't need to be enticed or put in the mood when they visit your site. They're there for a particular reason and the sooner you give them what they came looking for, the better. They don't need Splash pages, Flash pagesor whatever silliness you think will put them "in the mood." They want what they want NOW. "Give me your information. Sell me your product. Thank you, ma'am."