New Mutts site in User-centered design

On March 17th, the new Mutts site (www.muttscomics.com)was launched. But it was not until today that I noticed. I happened to browse to the site to send my colleague a link to the daily strip subscription page.

Guess what? The HOMEPAGE is now the subscription page! I am probably not the only one that never views the site but does enjoy the daily comic strip in my mailbox. How's that for user-centered design!

It features a logo and some high-lighted links to the shop and the news, that are pulled out of the main navigation. Beneath that you see the simple yet well functional main navigation in a horizontal bar. Underneath it they placed a fairly large main visual of Mooch and Earl (the two main characters of the comic series) with a short review comment by a paper or writer or client on top of it.

Beneath that, there's the daily strip for the current day. Here's a good thing: the strip shows up halfway the page-fold on a resolution of 1024x768 (with a clearly visible yet subtle link to the past daily strips). Only in 800x600 it might be missed by the visitor but hey - 800x600 in 2009 ... ;) Thus, the majority of the visitors will have to scroll down to see the entire strip - which gives them great chance to end up at the call-to-action underneath it: the Daily strip subscription. Well done! Perhaps the subscription-field could have placed in the lower-right corner of the main visual, so it shows up above the fold.

I think it's great that Patrick McDonnel acknowledged the needs of his site visitors, instead of wanting to tell all about all the stuff that HE thinks are important at first.