Top Winter Resorts

It's ski time! If you think that Vancouver is a little bit to crowdy by now, Askmen.com has a good Top 10 Winter Resorts to help you pick a nice ski holiday destination. Their choice is partly European, partly American and Canadian, but; for sure, all the resorts they have selected are Top notch places for ski lovers.

Here is their ranking. Using our tools on Rankmill.com you can create your own ranking or update this one, add comments, images, video and Google maps!

TOP past moments Olympic Winter Games

The Guardian has recently published a nice TOP moments of the past winter Olympics games. Here is how it appears using our widget (that you can find here).

Quite nice to remember Eddie the Eagle, the incredible story between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, and the spectacular (and safe) fall of Hermann Maier...

TOP most expensive sculptures

"Most-expensive.net" has an interesting post following the recent sale of one Giocametti's sculpture which has reached the record level of USD 104,3 millions ( £ 65 millions). According to Sotheby's it is the most expensive work of art ever sold at an auction. If you are in the mood of buying a sculpture, they give a TOP 5 most expensive sculptures ever sold, at leats you will have an idea of prices!

Here is how this TOP looks using our widget :

How to create a Top list?

Rankings are very popular on the Net : easy access to information, sorting of elements, synthesis, all these reasons explain their popularity. However, there is still one thing to be improved, the way they are displayed.

There are three main elements in a ranking (or Top list) :
1) The list of ranked elements and their position on the "ladder",
2 ) Comments on each item (why this item has such a position),
3 ) Added elements which make the Top list more attractive (pictures, videos, music, etc.).
It is difficult to balance these three elements, and according to the kind of Top list you have, you will use different patterns. We have identifies three kinds of rankings, none of them is really satisfactory.

- Top List Category 1 : the position of the items is the most important

In this kind of Top list, the aim is to give the user a fast access to the ranking itself. As simply as possible, the user has to be able to "look" at the full Top list and see what is on the top, what is on the bottom. Comments and added elements are then less visible. The "column" shape is usually the best one for this kind of Top.

Two examples :

TOP Best movies on IMDB :

TOP Best restaurants in the world by "San Pellegrino"

Pros : Easy reading
Cons : Difficulty to access added information for any item (a click on one item leads to a new page). No visual elements, the ranking is a bit dull.

- Top list Category 2 : the comments are the most important

The important thing of this kind of Tops is the opinion of the author.  Comments will then be privileged. They will appear immediately after the item. Such an organization makes the Top to look like a classical article, in which the items would be headers. This kind of ranking, no surprise, is often present on media sites.

Two examples :

TOP best food in the world by "The Guardian".

TOP best hotels in the world by "Le Point"

Pros : possibility to read easily both the item and the comment.

Cons : No global view of the ranking. Difficulty to go from one item to another. Difficulty to insert added elements.

- Top list category 3 : added elements are the most important.

In these rankings, more than long explanations, pictures or video explain the different positions of the items. The best organization of the Top list is then something similar to a slideshow, you navigate from one "slide" to the other to discover the ranking.

Two examples :

TOP 2010 trends by "l'Express style"

Pros : Good visual impact

Cons : No visibility of the global ranking, no possibility for the user to act on the ranking (you can just click to go forward or backward), problem of circulation in the Top.

At Rankmill.com, we have tried to find a way to "design" a ranking which would be adaptable, whatever the categoryhttp://www.rankmill.com/top.php?tid=372&user=2215&account=1. We have now two designs :

- Top list used on our site Rankmill.com

This kind of Top is not active on this blog, of course (to see in action go to Rankmill!), but we think that it has the advantage of being quite balanced between items, comments and added elements (pictures, videos, weblinks, Google maps).

Top technologies that will rock the world in 2010

The other Top we have developped is especially devoted to bloggers. By creating a Top on our site and inserting an embedded code in a blog or web page, they will have the possibility to integrate a Top like this :

The user has a full view of the Top, he can easily go from one item to the other, and just by clicking on an item he can have more information, without refreshing the page (in the present case it is a video but we could have added a comment for instance). If you want to try it, it's here.

Thank you to give us your opinion, it helps. It's here !

TOP novels

Out of the of the tens of thousands novels ever published in english (more than 40 000 new "fiction" books each year according to Industry Statistics ), which ones are worth reading? From opinions given by your english teacher when you were at school, recommandations made by friends or booksellers and critics read, we have all our own sources of information. However at Rankmill we were looking for a good ranking made wether by critics (they are profesionnal readers after all) or wether by wisdom of crowd. We have found an interesting TOP at Modern Library ( owned by the publisher Random House) which compares two TOP 100 best novels (english novels), one created by a "board" and one created by readers.

We have "recreated" that Top below in what is our new widget.



Bloggers, soon you'll be able to create (very easily) a Top on Rankmill.com and with a simple embedded code insert it in your posts! Stay tuned. If you want to be part of our Beta testers or give us your opinion : it's here !

Why on the Net a good Top list is always better than long explanations.

Posts and articles containing rankings (or Top lists) are usually very popular and part of the most read items of many sites and blogs. Some media sites, Time.Com for instance, have even created dedicated places for their Top lists. Rankings are in fact very convenient for the net and here is why.

1 – Hierarchy of information

From the reader’s point of view, to read a ranking is having access to a personalised hierarchy of information, which is generally not the case on the Net : there is a real added value. From the blogger’s point of view, creating a ranking is a way to show his credentials.

From the reader’s point of view : a Top list means things are simpler and more direct.

With the huge quantity of information available on line, the problem today is much more to find which information are really valuable than to find the information itself. Let ‘s imagine, for instance, that I want to find information about « films noirs » movies. The page results for « films noir movies » is the following on Google :

The first link is the Wikipedia article about the movie genre « film noir » . There, I will find encyclopedic information about « film noir », and as often with Wikipedia, the information will be quite accurate and meaningful. Moreover using the links and references of the article I will have access to other interesting pages. The other links on the page are a French site about a films noirs movie posters exhibition, a site about a rock band named « film noir »  and a specialized site, apparently updated for the last time in 2004. Google has done a correct job, I have access to many sources devoted to « film noir ». However I have no special information about what is really good, whats is worth being seen or read. I will have to sort things by myself, it will take time.But If I search for « best films noir » movies, the answers are the following :



I have the choice between four Top lists. With them, very clearly, I will know what is the best according to their authors, and often why. The information is of course different from what I will find on Wikipedia but the hierarchy created by these Top lists gives me a real added value : a first sorting has been done. In a glance, I can judge the quality of the post, and I have direct information to qualitative information.


From the blogger’s point of view : a Top list gives evidence of competence

Rankings enable bloggers to show users, very rapidly, if what they say about a matter is relevant or not, and if there is a real added value in the treated  information.  By analyzing all the information available, with his experience and knowledge, the blogger will have organized and sort things and will give the user a kind of synthesis. With the example of « best film noir »,  the first two links on Google are links to well known and trustful sites : IMDB, the biggest movie database, and epinions. The fourth link sends to Eddie Muller’s page. Personally, I don’t know who Eddie Muller is, but at least I know that Eddie Muller has created  a Top 25 film noir movies, with comments. It indicates a minima that Eddie Muller has a certain knowledge about that genre and that it could be worth paying a visit to his page if I am in search of information on film noir movies.

This is even more obvious when a blog is dedicated to a specific topic and is written by an « expert ». As a reader, if I am looking for a blog dedicated to the Iphone for instance, I will be much more attracted if I know that on that blog, I can find the TOP 2009 Iphone, the TOP Iphone games and the  TOP free Iphone application. These Top lists will be clear indications of the knowledge of the blogger and of the work he has done to give me information with added value.

2 – Top lists give immediate information about the blogger.

To create a Top list is quite a good and efficient way to tell who we are. Give me  your Top best cities, music, novels or  movies, and I will have quite a precise idea of who you are.  Equally, on professionnal (say "entrepreneurship") or personal matters (say "good restaurants in Paris"), give me your rankings and I can tell immediately if what you say is relevant for me or not.

From the reader’s point of view :  aTop list indicates the quality of the source.

As a user, I have absolutely no idea of the seriousness of 99,99% (low estimation) of the available sources. A ranking enables me to judge immediately if the blogger has something for me. If we take the two previous examples, one professional, the other one personal, here are two rankings you can find on the Net :

Top 10 mistakes people make when starting a business 



« Mistake # 1, not enough money». I have been trough that, I know the problem, I do also think it is the danger number one in a start up. My first impression is quite good. Time to read : two seconds.


« Mistake #2, not thinking survival ». That would not have been my choice, but the comment is intelligent and meaningful. My first impression is confirmed, I’ll read the blog, I’ll add it to my bookmarks, I’ll probably come back. Total time to read : five seconds.


Now about more personnal matters :


Top traditional French cuisine restaurants in Paris. 



« # 1 – Beauvilliers ». Beauvilliers is a very good brasserie, what you eat is quite good but not so traditional. I would not say that this is THE restaurant for traditional French cuisine in Paris. Moreover it is quite expensive, you also pay for the name and the place. I would certainly not take it as my number 1. Time to read : one second.

« #2 – Bofinger ». The restaurant has more traditional recipes, but once again the adress is not exceptional and you have many more interesting places. I am not convinced, I know that I will not find the real best addresses in that ranking. (By the way, if  you come to Paris, drop me a mail, I’ll send you my very personal and very secret Top list!). Total time to read : four seconds.

Thanks to the rankings, I do not only have an organized and synthetized information, I have also a clear view of who is the source. And by "who", I mean if the source corresponds to what I am looking for. It does not have to be always about quality of the information. I can also judge if what is written will amuse me, or if we have common tastes, or if it inspirational, etc.

From the blogger’s point of view : a Top list says who I am and what I want to achieve.

If the creation of a Top list gives the blogger a clear image of  competence ( again "competence" here means "achieving what the blogger wants to do", it could be information, tastes, fun, ...), the elements of his ranking will show users who he is, in a dynamic way, not as in the « who I am » section.

The following "Top list movies of the decade" tell us many things about their authors.


Top list n°1
# 1 - The Squid and the whale
# 2 – Synecdoche
# 3 – Children of men
# 4 – The life aquatic
# 5 – There will be blood
# 6 – The barbarians invasion
# 7 – The diving bell and the butterfly
# 8 – After the wedding
…


Top list n°2 
# 1 – The aviator
# 2 – Whale rider
# 3 – Gangs of New York
# 4 – Memento
# 5 – Slumdog millioniare
# 6 – Sin city
# 7 – Charlie Wilson’s war
# 8 – Mystic river
…

To create the ranking n°1 is to tell users «  I am a cinephile, with sharp, international, and eclectic tastes», creating the ranking n°2 is to tell users « I am a movie lover,  loving Hollywood big  budget films with famous actors ». In both cases users will know immediately what to expect and if what you say is relevant to them. According to what they expect they'll chose one blog, or the other. 

It is then perfecly understandable to see more and more Top lists on the Net and even more and more «professional » sites using them (The Times , The NYT , Askmen,  Le Figaro,  The Guardian, …). They perfectly answer the need for users to sort the information, to go straight to the point and to know who is the source of this information.