Before looking into who will make headlines next year let’s see what made websites successful in 2006. In short: Marketing, Content, Usability, Design and Behavior are the main factors that make a website work.

Internet Marketing is a combination of Presence (how well is it pushed? How known is it?) and Self Dynamic (how well does it market itself as a product?).

Interactive Content is a combination of Constructivity (is the content/service productively usable? Are the texts authentic? Do they incite to write? Are they leading to positive action?) and Uniqueness (are they genuine? Are they special?)

Usability is a combination of Structure/IA (Are the contents organized in an understandable way? Where am I? Where can I go?) and the organisation of the User Interface (Do I understand where is what and why? Do I understand how it works? Does it do what I expect it to do?)

Web Design is a combination of Typography (Is the text easy to read? Is the typography web adequate?) and Attention to detail (does the website care about the little things? Is it characteristic and delicate or just bold?)

Online Behavior is a combination of Interactive Ethics (do the authors/owners have a positive open-minded attitude? Do they follow the basic rules of good manners?) and Democracy (Are they working towards a democratic open web or do they work only for their own pocket?)

Top Services, Platforms, Tools

Pres: Presence
Dyn: Dynamics
Cons: Constructivity
Id: Uniqueness
IA: Information Architecture
UI: User Interface
Detail: Attention to detail
Read: Readability
Ethics: Digital Ethics
Dem: Democracy

We all know that the website of the year is youtube. And if you wonder why — it’s not a secret anymore. Youtube has an excellent selfdynamic, it is very constructive in its nature, usability and design are quite good, but most of all: Eventhough ethically it sometimes operates in a gray zone, youtube is an exceptionally democratic platform. If you wonder why Google doesn’t get good behaviour grades: 1. The amount of realtime marketing data they have direct access to allows them to stay way ahead of their competition (why does no one ever talk about that?). 2. Google for Google and China 3. Google works its way up to the next global monopolist that will be able to dictate its own web standards.

The star stands for “Epic Win”, the bomb for “Epic Failure”, the arrows are self explanatory.

News

To put old school New York Times in front of slashdot might seem offensive. Well, not if you appreciate unique content and user centered design. The New York Times has become the news site with the best user interface and most love to detail. If you have seen the coverage of the elections you know what I’m talking about. MSN is there because of its massive exposure. As such it is not very convincing but mere force still gets you an Alexa rank of 2.

Social Networks

Number one social network site is Japanese mixi. If you don’t speak Japanese and don’t have a friend inside that will invite you, you’ll never see why. Too bad. Facebook with its stingy design definitely has the biggest potential to overrun everybody else in the field next year. They have a better chance to make it in Japan than myspace. Also Mark Zuckerberg didn’t sell to Yahoo. Why? Google didn’t sell. Craigslist didn’t sell. Which of the two strategies does he follow?

Social Linklists

Clear winner is Reddit. Smart crowd, smart system, smart developers, big future. No need to say much more.

Corporate Websites

Clear winner: 37 signals. Their website is almost perfect. Of course there is no way around Microsoft when talking about the loudest websites even though their new redesign is not much more than a sad attempt to do be hip. One of the worse this year is Edelman. No real competence, no ethics, all facade. In terms of presence the astroturfing and the dubious deal with Technorati actually paid off.

Blogs

Stylish, smart, funny, winner: Subtraction. The author of the blog is the creative director at The New York Times Online, so he scores twice. Again, we have a couple of antiliberal candidates in the list (student death threat catalyst Malkin and rightwing nutcase Redstate). For a conservative site, Redstate actually made quite a good redesign. Hand in hand with the lack of liberalism and tolerance goes the lack of openness, constructiveness, democratic spirit and humor. And that’s why ultra right wing bloggers can’t make it on the web.

 

Don’t be shy to tell us whom we forgot. If you liked this you might be interested in our daring predictions of who will make headlines in 2007.