The trouble with cloning
Printers dissatisfied with their own website – and let’s face it, if you’re not, you ought to be – may be tempted to just copy one they like. Some call this plagiarism, others say it’s just learning from best practice. Yet web usability guru Jakob Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/copy-big-sites.html) says whatever you call it, you shouldn’t do it.
He points out that, for example, you have no idea of how much the company spent (their bigger budget solution might not work for you), you risk copying stuff that doesn’t work as well as the stuff that does and you might end up with a load of features – eg blogs – which go stale if they’re not updated often. He adds that the user experience of a website isn’t about a particular bell or whistle, it’s about the interaction of every element. So a device that looks good on another website might not fit with the other elements on yours.
