The Power of The List design

Can the popularity of a site be determined by a well written list? It sure seems that way. These days, more and more people are attracted to lists - both long and short - on just about any topic.

Visit a site like Smashingmagazine daily and you are bound to find at least one long list in the content rotations. That’s what they’ve become famous for. That’s when made them what they are today. It’s how their homepage alone is worth $8k at a time due to the near $1k ad spots. Lists can lead to popularity.

The DNA of a Good List

For a list to be successful, there are a couple of rules you must follow. Many have tried to mimic what I call the “smashing effect” - the ability to use a seemingly basic content post to draw lots of hits and lots of views. Every list on Smashing generally receives 1k or higher Diggs, if not than just under 1k. Knowing how the “digg-effect” brings in mass visitors to one’s site, plus the already existing readership a site like SM has, helps them increase readership every single day.

But a good list is much more than simply picking a topic and taking the first 50 links on Google and using them as the list contents. A lot more time is involved than you may think.

• Research - First and foremost a good list is always going to be one that takes a lot of time to build. Research, research, research. If you’re thinking “Hey, Wordpress is pretty popular, why don’t I showcase 30 of the best free themes?” Obviously, it’s been done time and time again. As a theme developer, I’ve seen my themes in “best of” lists all the time. Along with my themes, I also see the same themes in every single list I’m listed in. There’s no variety and no research. Many people will even borrow all or most of another person’s list and claim it as their own as well. A strong list of 50+ items takes a hell of a lot of time, but an original list can be helpful to a very big audience - and it will show as your own site audience grows after publishing a “hit list”.
• Backbone - It is also very important to include some substance to any list you write. For example, many of the wordpress theme lists are nothing more than an image of theme and the theme title. By taking the list further and doing a bit more work it can really become something that is truly bookmark worthy. A short one or two sentence blurb on each list item would elevate the list to whole new level, taking it well beyond the average everyday blog list.
• Images, styling, and readability - A long list without any colors is just a long blurb of text for a normal reader. You want to have the ability to skim. That’s why the “sexiest people” lists are so successful - it’s all visuals! Whenever you can, be sure to include special styling or images with a detailed list. It helps ease the readability and can break about list items, allowing each one to stand out much easier. Now when you skim the page you actually can be drawn to things other than text. Smashing for example generally uses some huge ass images in all of their lists to get the point across. Whether its a list of popular fonts, themes, artists, tutorials, or whatever, the images are definitely a big help.
• Be Bookmark Worthy - Lists are meant to be time savers. A shitty list is never going to help your cause out. (For example this might be a shitty post, I guess I’ll know soon enough.) If you can drag people in to bookmark your list, your doing things right. You could publish one list in your whole blogger lifetime, and if it’s good enough, it will be saved and used over and over again by an unlimited amount of people. Your saving people time, and time is money, especially as designers and developers. Guide them in the right direction and they’ll return the favor by frequenting your site more and more.

Totally Kick Ass List Examples

Thinking of composing your own ass kicking list? Here are a few bad ass examples which should provide you with some guidelines. Remember, be original and write your own!

70 Beauty-Retouching Photoshop Tutorials - via Smashingmagazine
A classic example of Smashing doing what they do best, as mentioned numerous times in the above piece. Blurbs, images, and organization - everything that makes a great list.

37 Free Must-Have Fonts - via Francesco Mugnai
While this site lacks descriptions of each site (the font name, creator, and license would have really made this top of the line) the images alone are suffice. They are large and give you a quick preview as to what the font is like.

99 Graphic Design Resources - via Just Creative Design
Another perfectly executed list. Organized into categories which you can easily jump to. Site screenshots / logos to go along with each list item, and descriptions of the sites included in the list. They could use 1 more to make 100 and add this site to the list, but it’s probably a bit too late.