Is your website driving away customers? If you're committing these site development sins, it could be costing you more than you know.
Being cluttered. Your site can't be all things to all people, says Drew Ungvarsky, founder of Grow Interactive, an interactive studio in Norfolk, Va. Be selective about the content you decide to put on the site and organize it in a clean and logical manner. "A lot of people try to put too much, especially on their home pages, and cram more down their customers' throats," he says.
Making things difficult. The route from first click to sale has to be easy. Ungvarsky says it's important to think like customers and prospects when evaluating the design of a site. One of his pet peeves: Having to set up an account before checking out. Let customers buy from you on their terms, he says.
Staying static. Your website is never done, he says. Keep finding ways to engage your customers, add content and make your site fresh. This will help keep customers interested and may also help in your web rankings, he says. If you're promoting a specific product or service or have a special promotion going on, it's a good idea to use landing pages that support e-mail and social networking outreach efforts.
Copying your competition. Always check out what your competition is doing, but don't be a copycat, advises Steve Graceffa, president of ExNihilo, a web services firm in Providence, R.I. If you look too much like other businesses, customers could have trouble telling you apart. Review what others are doing, but speak to your own customers and use your own institutional knowledge to determine what is important to them.
Ignoring your audience's needs. Try getting baby boomers to read eight-point type and they may get frustrated. Be sure you understand your audience and its preferences before you build your site. Tiny or hard-to-read typefaces or harsh colors may look great from a design standpoint, but if you're not designing for the people who buy from you, you could be losing their business, Graceffa says.
Eschewing analytics. Review the analytics of any sites you have before you begin designing a new one, Graceffa says. Know your bounce rate--the number of people who leave the site after viewing only one or two pages--your top entrance page and your top exit page. Google Analytics will help you understand where your traffic is coming from, what keywords people are using to find you and what they're reading on your site. That way, Graceffa says, you can build more of what's working.
Refusing to get help. Don't let your pride or fear of spending earn you a spot on WebPagesThatSuck.com. If web design is not your strong suit and you need more than what a web design template can provide, seek professional help. Check your local business associations and look online for sites you like. Many have links at the bottom to their designers' sites, so you can find a designer whose work you already like.
This article was originally published in the January 2011 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: The Sins of Website Design.
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Comments:
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Great article. We agree that websites are never done. A website should grow and change with the company.
Refusing to get help, for me, is the worst thing that they can do, most especially, when they already know that they have committed the web design sins that are listed in this article.
For the entrepreneur and most small businesses it boils down to denial. I think "staying static" is the most common sin and the one they have the hardest time moving past. Small businesses owners need to realize websites are no longer online brochures. They are your salespeople and they touch your prospects well before anyone else in your company does. Recently wrote a blog post tited Migrating the Small Business Owner and his Website Through the Five Stages of Grief, which discusses similar issues. http://www.web-savvy-marketing.com/2011/01/migrating-the-small-business-owner-and-his-website-through-the-five-stages-of-grief/
Great article and some sound advice from the others. Just want to add that it's really important the home page tells the visitor exactly what your business does. They should be as few clicks as possible away from the information they are after. Victor touches on the importance of including a feedback mechanism to show customers that you value their opinions, as this will help refine your website/offer. You might want to think about whether you want this feedback open for others to see or use a solution like Feedbackify if you want to keep it private.
We see nothing but entrepreneurs, and build websites or repair websites daily. Here"s what we tell new business owners: 1. Research your niche 2. Research the competition 3. Choose function and purpose of your website 4. Determine audience 5. Choose and balance your media-website ratio 6. Give your brand a voice, a look and a name 7. Launch your brand online, actively 8. Follow your marketing plan 9. Change and adjust to the market and competition regularly 10. Rebuild and update your brand online as needed
When it comes to looking at what your competition does, I agree, don't be a copycat. However, look at the things they do and what works. Picking and choosing best practices from other websites will help you fine tune your website. For example, you might like the slideshow on website A, but you might like how categories are organized on website B. Customize the look to fit your business goals and adopt similar tools to your website. This is especially true for new entrepreneurs who don't have any customer feedback as they are starting out. See what others do and try to get yourself started based on thins you see. Once you do and begin receiving feedback from your customers you will be able to fine tune it to exactly what they need.
I'm not saying all people should know this, but these are basic rules for all web design. Especially if you are remotely close to considering other people's perception, or even your own taste. We work with three or four new businesses per week, and we constantly see these mistakes because they cut corners using templates or $5 a month web builder services (intuit specifically). The times have changed, you no longer need to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a custom website with professional design and functionality. The results speak for themselves, we just took over ChurchWebDesigns.com and we are growing rapidly. If you're interested in running your own Cheapsites business in your town, all we require is a population of 50k or more and we'll do all the hard work from here! Dan CheapSites.com
I think all of these things are very important, and if you don't know how to design your own website properly, it can have negative effects on your company. Sometimes you just need to hire the professional to do it. I personally design websites for small businesses from home, you can contact me at rasmeetsinghdesign@gmail.com if you need any help! Happy holidays!
I'll have to applaud you on the last item on this post. The problem with many entrepreneurs these days is that either they don't like spending for help or they are too proud to ask for help - either way, it can really sabotage a website's good intent into becoming another website worthy of a 'hall of shame' award. Your tips absolutely make sense, thanks!!
But then the title wouldn't fit, eh? I would like the article to have more content, but the points it does make are the most frequently overlooked points. Too often decision makers think they can design a site and web designers think they know what's best but don't know a snippet of actual code.
Here's a clean website I like: http://meetyourindianreplacement.com
I would have preferred to see the article written in positive terms, what you should do, not what you shouldn't do: 1. Reduce Clutter 2. Make things easy 3. Keep changing 4. Monitor your comp 5. Determine your audience's needs 6. Pay attn to analytics 7. Get help
That's pretty good article and breakdown of the points. In similar lines here is a post from our Blog outlining few items to improve your visitor to lead conversion rate and standards for Search Engine Optimization. http://www.itvibes.com/business-media/is-your-website-bringing-enough-sales/ Look forward to your comments and feedback.