Compelling Marketing Communications

Ineffective Web Design

Web site design encompasses a number of fields, all of which have to work together to serve your customer's needs. The graphic design, functional layout, content, and navigation all need to make it as easy as possible for the user to find what they are looking for. In too many web sites, one or more of these elements instead interfere with their ability to use the site.

One of the most important effects of the Web has been opening a vast number of potential providers for nearly every service or product. A side effect of this is users have less patience than they once did. If your web site makes it harder than necessary to obtain what the user wants, they know they have other options.

Some of the worst web design errors that will send your users running are:

• Designing for the wrong audience: Did you design the web site to win an industry award or to please an important executive? Who had more input into the design, marketing or customer service? These things are indicators that you didn't design the site for the customer, but to impress some internal audience.

• The web site is too focused on your "story": Ask yourself a question: How much do you care about the company that bakes the bread you buy? Customers visit your site because they want a product, service, or information. In other words, they have a problem they want solved, and they want you to solve it. Telling them how wonderful you are as a company is secondary to fulfilling that goal.

• Design that obscures instead of enlightens: If it takes a user more than five seconds to decipher your web site, they won't wait. Both the purpose and navigation of the site should be clear to the first-time visitor without explanation.

• Bloated pages: Another thing users don't wait for is slow page loading times. Once upon a time, everything on the Web was new and modem speeds were slow, so people were willing to wait ten, fifteen, 30 seconds for a page to load. Not any longer. If a page takes more than 5 seconds to load, they're probably clicking the back button.

• Unprofessional pages: Blogs, Facebook pages, tweets, and other ephemeral communication are notorious for their use of chat speak, poor grammar, atrocious spelling and many other sins against the English language. Your web pages, on the other hand, should be much more professional. Users have the same expectations of web pages that they have of brochures or any other marketing collateral.

These are just some of the most common, and most fatal, errors in web site design that we see every day. The Big Dogs of Marketing are experts in their fields and they can help fix these design flaws, and more. We will be discussing some specific design tips in our next newsletter, which comes out the third Tuesday of every month. We'll see you on May 18th.

(860) 604-5573 | Bill@CompellingMarketingCommunications.com

164 East Center Street, Suite 8 , Manchester, CT 06040