Web Design

Successful Websites – Don’t Be Shy

Did you know that the second-most-visited page on a typical website is your ABOUT US page?

Successful Websites Have an About Page That’s right. Most of us want to know who we’re dealing with. Unless you’re big enough to have your brand become a household name, you’re going to have to deal with the fact that people do business with people. They don’t do business with anonymous websites (at least they don’t like to).

This doesn’t mean you have to share that embarrassing high school yearbook photo or disclose your home address.

What is does mean is that you share a little more about your background, your passions, and your credentials. How much you share, and the way you do it, depends on how formal your website is.

For example, check out graphic designer Andrew Reifman’s About page – you get a feel for his personality as well as his design skills.

Your About page can include:

industry or trade associations, memberships
press releases, favorable press mentions, other social proof
stories of how you got started in your business, or your company’s history
photos of you/your store
your company’s vision, guarantee, goals
testimonials

Remember, what your About page is really doing is reassuring people that you’re credible – a legitimate business, someone who’s not going to rip them off. If you were one of your prospective clients, what would you want to know?

And please, if you haven’t checked out MY about page – do so!

Successful Websites – Keep It Simple

Today I’m starting a series of blog posts on the keys to truly successful websites. Whether you’re doing your own site or having a professional web designer do it for you, these insights should help you make smarter decisions.

Keep Web Design and Navigation Simple

The most basic, most important key to an effective website is to make it easy for site visitors to understand 3 things:

what you do;
who you do it for; and
why they should have YOU do it.

People who can’t figure that out – quickly! – move on to the next website.

Keep website navigation simple This means you don’t need expensive, high-end graphics. You don’t need animation. You don’t need for every page to appear in the navigation.

The website template pictured to the right looks cool, doesn’t it?

But look how complicated it is! There are navigation links in those circles on the left and above the top blue area. Some of the icons (to the right of the map image) are navigation links too.

Then that little email icon is hanging way outside the main part of the site, on the lower left… why is that?

You’ll get a lot more business from your website if you and/or your web designer focus on making it as easy as possible for website visitors to get the information they came for.

Poor Website, Poor Sales – 46% Fewer Customers

What if I told you that improving your website could result in up to 46 percent more customers?

It’s a staggering number, but that’s one way of looking at the results of a survey done last year in the UK by 1&1 Internet. They interviewed 2000 adults, and found that 46 percent of consumers cancelled plans to spend with a business after finding a poor quality website.

Poor Website Poor Sales 37 percent of consumers walked away completely – did not spend any money at all with the company in question. An additional 9 percent chose to spend less.

All because the website was perceived as being of poor quality.

Oliver Mauss, the CEO of 1&1 Internet Ltd. explained that “… keeping an ugly or badly functioning website online can comprise a risk to sales revenue. Consumers have ever higher expectations, and it is essential that every company website inspires confidence.”

34 percent of consumers felt that, in general, the small business websites they see are “tired” and “unimpressive.” 41 percent of consumers find errors such as typos or broken links.

Nearly half of consumers – 49 percent – felt that having a bad website made a worse impression on them than not having a website at all.

(What makes a bad website? Well, if you have to ask, it probably needs at least some improvement. Request a free Web Assessment and I’ll give you some insight.)

If your site is more than a few years old, or if it was cheaply done, there’s a good chance that it’s costing you money. (However, price is no guarantee of performance; I’ve redesigned $10,000 sites that looked “cool” but didn’t get the phone to ring.)

Mauss concluded that “Businesses that invest carefully in their web experience will see higher levels of customer spend, retention and referral.”

Economizing on your website is a false economy, since the risk of driving away prospective customers is so large. A quality website leads to more sales, and some web designers will work with you on pricing or payment to make it easier to fit the initial investment into your budget.

I’d be delighted to talk with you about a site redesign; please contact me, no obligation!

Don’t Make Me Think – Web Usability

What’s the most important thing you should do if you want to make sure your website is easy to use?

It’s actually quite simple. As much as you can, make sure people “get” what your site is about, what you offer, who it’s for. Right away. Obviously. On the home page. Make it self-evident. So much so that someone who has no idea who you are and what you do can still land on your site’s home page and say “Oh he’s a painter.”

And it should ALSO be obvious – require little to no thinking – what to do next. Where the navigation is. What can be clicked on. Where to start. What that link means. How to reach you.

When you’re creating a web site, your job is to make it as easy as possible for website visitors to GET what you what them to do – WITHOUT MAKING THEM THINK!

Home Page Must-Have Content

I’m amazed how many business websites fail to include the most important information, right up front on the home page:

Most Important Thing to Say on your Website

Why You Shouldn’t Build Your Own Business Website

“Anybody can download a website template or use a website builder and make a few updates to it — why should anybody pay a designer to do it for them?”

A blunt question – and while no one has ever asked me that directly, I’m sure many business people DO wonder if hiring someone to design a website is money well spent. So here’s my answer – and it’s pretty blunt too.

Getting a site UP (technical skills) is not the same as getting a GOOD site up.

Many web design tools are fairly simple to use, especially if you’re pretty comfortable with software such as Microsoft Word or online services like Facebook. It may be a time-consuming and frustrating process, but you can probably get a site up. But it takes experience and training to make proper choices – in colors, in wording, in site navigation, in domain names, in keyword research, in marketing strategy.

Say you decide to build your own home, and it looks pretty good. But unless you know about drainage and materials and insulation and air flow and traffic flow and plumbing etc etc, it probably won’t be a comfortable place to live in. And unless it’s in a good location with desirable features, it’s probably not going to sell in a few years either.

It’s less about how a website LOOKS and more about how a website DELIVERS.

Today you don’t need to be a graphics whiz to build a site that looks good. There are millions of attractive websites. But sexy graphics aren’t usually what deliver the sign-ups, sales and traffic that you want.

Yes, a site should have the appropriate “look” for your audience. But what matters MORE isn’t web design at all, it’s web MARKETING. Online copywriting, keyword research, search engine optimization, competition analysis, smart information architecture… all are key to the success of your website.

Do you have those skills? Probably not. (In fact a lot of “web designers” don’t either – they’re good at using a particular web design tool, but they don’t know much about web marketing.)

Your business is your livelihood.

Can you AFFORD to have a website that screams “Another free website from XYZ.com”? Do you want to look successful and professional or desperate and clueless? Why should someone invest their hard-earned money hiring you, when it doesn’t look like you were willing to invest your money in your own business?

Your website is not the place to present anything less than your best face.

Of course budgets need to be considered, but a smart modern web designer will usually be able to offer options that keep costs down while giving you a professional web presence.

If you want to build your own website for hobby or personal reasons – sure. Have fun.

But your business website is just too important to be designed by an amateur.