Mike Garrison (mikegarrison@alum.mit.edu) writes:
I think that splash pages may not be one of the top-10 web mistakes, but they are probably the top useless web fashion of the past year or two.
Why?
No one wants to have to access it every time, so getting to it really annoys anyone who is not a first time user.
But for the first time user, it adds a useless step between them and whatever brought them to the site in the first place. So it really annoys them too.
Most new users will come via a search engine anyway, so they'll probably miss the splash page.
If you make it the default highest page in the server (eg. http://www.useit.com/ ) then when people try to find your home page by chopping off a URL, they get the useless splash page instead.
They ruin the back button. (Your #1 new mistake.) I especially hate it when a page I have bookmarked (say: //blah.com/ ) gets moved to some URL like //blah.com/content and my bookmark suddenly starts taking me to a splash page. Then I have to edit my bookmark so that it will take me to the real home page.
Jakob's reply: I agree: splash pages are useless and annoying. In general, every time you see a splash page, the reaction is "oh no, here comes a site that will be slow and difficult to use and that doesn't respect my time."
Splash pages are a sure sign of bad Web design.
