Avoid These 5 Costly Web Design Mistakes
1. Creating a "Super Cool" Web Site
It is understandable that every business owner wants to WOW their customers. These "WOW factors" include creative navigation menus, fancy flash animations, unique web layouts that defy general user expectations. All user experience studies have demonstrated that the fancier or creative a web site looks, the faster visitors leave.
20 seconds is all you have to catch a visitor's attention. If you had 20 seconds to make a business presentation, would you spend with a 30-minute opening statement? Simplicity in web design goes a long way in impressing visitors and converting them to customers. Your web site is not the place for your or your web designer's creativity.
2. Designing the Web Site without Target Audience in Mind
Most business owners and web designers create the web sites for themselves, not the customers. They put out the content they think appropriate, choose the color combinations they prefer and use the fonts that look good on their computers. The end result can be a web site that looks good only to you and your web designer, but no one else.
If most of your customers are senior citizens, shouldn't you use large clear fonts with a high contrast so your visitors won't have to reach for their reading glasses?
20 seconds is all you have to catch a visitor's attention. If you had 20 seconds to make a business presentation, would you spend it with a 30-minute opening statement? Simplicity in web design goes a long way in impressing visitors and converting them to customers. Your web site is not the place for your or your web designer's creativity.
3. Making Your Web Site Look Like an Advertisement
Everyday, we see ads everywhere. When visitors search at search engines, they are not looking for ads, but for information that can solve their problems. Most business web sites talk endlessly about themselves, like every ad does. Advertising may work in other media like TV or newspaper, but they don't connect well with web users. Visitors come to your web site with only one goal in their mind, which is to find out what your company can do for them. So, you need to talk directly to them and provide exactly what they are looking for.
4. Providing Useless Content
What makes a book a bestseller? It tells an interesting story, gives readers inspiration, reveals a new discovery and more. If you just gather some outdated materials that appear everywhere and put together a book, would anyone buy it?
Visitors do read at web sites, but only if the content is worthy of their valuable time. As a business owner, you need to think what your customers care the most and want to know the most. Useful content not only attracts new visitors, but also brings visitors back for repeat visits. These repeat visitors are 15 times more likely to become your customers than first-time visitors.
5. Ignoring Web User Feedback
Most business owners think they can build the web site once and forget about it for 5 years. By doing so, you will miss the great opportunity to make your web site a stronger marketing machine. Over the lifetime of a web site, a wide range of visitor information can be analyzed. Such information includes, where the visitors come from, what keywords they use at which search engines, how long they stay, which pages they view, how long they view each page, etc. You can these user feedbacks to your advantage and improve your web site's effectiveness.
When Terry says he's the best you believe him. He knows the business from every angle and has a reason behind every recommendation. I trust his judgment and guidance with my business. - Janie Peterson, Peterson Productions, Minneapolis, Minnesota