Top 10 Survival / Prepper Websites on the Internet
If you are anything like me you have a long list of favorite survival/prepper websites that you visit everyday. Each site has its own qualities with respect to appearance, community of followers and specific techniques for trying to reach the public. With that in mind I decided to rate as many of these sites as possible in order to come up with a top 10 list. Before I get into the criteria I should mention what made me immediately rule out any of the contenders. If I logged onto the home page of any one site and was immediately greeted by an annoying pop up ad it was off the table. I hate pop up ads, and by that I mean I despise them. That being said let’s get on the with the criteria which I used to review each site.
Initial Appeal: This happens within the first 3 seconds of visiting a site. I formulate an immediate impression as to how good/bad I think a site will be mere seconds after visiting a site and you do it as well. Are the eyes greeted with a pleasing color? Is it possible to identify within that first 3 seconds what the site is about, or must one dig around through a bunch of strange links and banner ads? Did someone get overzealous with widgets in addition to .gif ads (bombarded with flashing images) or is there a nice conservative mix of images and text? Like the old phrase goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. There might have been a site out there with ridiculous amounts of information, a prepper’s dream website, but if I couldn’t get past the first 3 seconds it didn’t have a chance. Think recruiter with a stack of 500 resumes to go through, each one gets about 3 seconds of consideration before going into the “take a second look ” pile or the trash.
Layout / Navigation: When you load a page on a site your eyes naturally move from the top left of the page to the right. Additionally what’s “above the fold” (what you see before you have to scroll down) is most the important content on the page when considering what type of initial impression it leaves on the visitor. That said what I’m looking for is ease of navigation, does the information on the page flow or is it a jumbled pile of links and images? There is nothing wrong with ads but are they placed neatly on the page and are their sizes consistent, or did the website owner not even take the time to standardize the banner sizes (thus leaving the page looking sloppy). Does the page render properly in IE, FF and Chrome? Links to other pages or categories should be laid out consistently and easy to find, in the world in which we live if someone cannot find what they are looking for withing 3-5 seconds they are off the page and onto something else.
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