Marketing your business through web design can either enhance or hinder your relationship with your audience. It’s important to keep certain factors in mind while designing your site. Many flawed designs are seen throughout the web and these mistakes are detrimental to the success of these businesses. There are numerous errors that are seen across the web and here are some of the biggest ones that make a difference.
1. Throwing registration in their faces is a one of the most common mistakes found in business websites. Don’t force consumers to sign up for your e-mails or enter their personal information. Think of your business like an online store: You find what you want and then you enter your information when you pay for it. This method can reel in gives you the upper hand and you have the services or product the consumers want and then take their information.
2. Remember the purpose of your site. The reason for the site is to sell your product or services. If you don’t explain the who, what, where, when, why and hows of what you can give people, they won’t know either. Don’t expect everything to be so self-explanatory but don’t state the truly obvious either. Make your purpose and reasonings clear and your customers will respond confidently, knowing they are getting what’s expected.
3. Don’t leave out the important details as it can be used to reel in customers. Sometimes companies leave out a lot of crucial features of their product or service in an effort to keep a “clean” page. Don’t be afraid of content. The more content there is, the more informed customers are about your product. However, don’t burden your viewer with pages of text. Negative space is a nice touch as it looks very sleek and modern, but if you have a lot of information, include some places to rest their eyes with images, videos, etc. This will help your consumer continue to read and stick with the information as well as let their eyes and minds flow with visuals.
4. Legibility seems like an obvious necessity but sometimes businesses get too caught up in the design concept visually that they forget to make sure the information is readable. Everything from font size, type, style, placement and color make a difference. Make important text stand out with bold font, italics, or color. Have informational text be large enough to read. If the text seems too small or compressed, think of a wider layout such as horizontal columns rather than vertical ones. Choose a color scheme that doesn’t hinder the viewer such as darker or muted colors. Neon colors may seem appealing but think about how long a viewer can stand staring at that for more than a few seconds. Everything makes a difference.
5. Flash may seem cool to look at but think about the functionality. This is a big one, especially for companies that just want a “pretty” site rather than one that is practical. People may get frustrated having to waiting for the next image to appear or for the animation to finish to get to where they want to go. Don’t trap your site into following the trend of new technology. A site with simple navigation and functional graphics is all it really needs. The extras may be overkill sometimes. This method also helps your site go on several platforms with different screen sizes including mobile ones.
6. Don’t be outdated either. There is a balance between choosing what is acceptable without being dated and overdoing the technology. Steer away from the stereotypical HTML colors including bright yellow, cyan and magenta. Choose more unique colors such as mustard yellow, navy and maroon. These colors give more of a serious or calming tone and is easier on the eyes. Also, stay away from flashing text and huge banners. As the years go on, everyone is heading towards a minimal outlook with less jumble and messages that are straight to the point.
7. Targeting your audience is important. If you have an older audience, think about making a larger font as their sight isn’t as good as younger crowds. If you have an audience from Wall Street, don’t worry about the edgyness of the design as much as the information conveyed. Tone down on the colors in this case as well. If you have children as your audience, add more colors and interactivity as they like to feel involved. These are just some of the many decisions that can be influenced by the demographic.
8. Call to Action should be on every page of your site. Whether it is to sign up for news, buy a product or receive information, people need to see that chance on any page of your site. They can decide at any minute and if they need to go to another page in order to join, they may not find the opportunity or change their mind. It’s important to get people involved once they decide to. A popular marketing strategy is AIDA which involves these steps: Awareness, Intention, Desire, Action. it is very effective and should be on every marketeer’s list.
9. Badges and certification are cool and all but sometimes, you just need to relax with them. Put the important ones up and leave the rest for your office or meeting. Having a few big awards already attracts customers for reliability. They don’t need it all up in their faces. Plus, having too many badges on a site causes clutter making it hard to create a clean site. It also shows that you’re trying to hard to impress people. If you know you’re good and can convey it with a few accomplishments, customers will see that and will respond accordingly.
Although these are not all of the mistakes seen on the web, these are probably the biggest and most common ones. It would probably take an entire book to explain all of the mistakes. Hopefully this post helps you achieve success with your site and if not, just contact us to do it for you as we love getting new customers everyday.