A website should give you new ways of marketing and selling your products and building relationships with your customers. But when I do a search for just about anything online I see a lot of web sites that are totally ineffective.
It seems that a lot of people forget that they are only one among tens of hundreds of thousands of the same type of businesses. In order to compete, you have to stand out. But it seems that the only standing out a lot of these companies do is in all the things you should not do.
Your web site should be powerful, emotional and should show the reader that his or her life would be more complete – better, easier, more productive, more profitable, and happier – if they owned what it is you’re selling.
Your design needs to move the reader while your content grabs them, working together they should build confidence in both your business and products. You have two seconds to tell your visitor what you sell and what’s in it for them. If that aligns with what they want, they’ll spend more time on your site and that should lead to more sales.
It’s never about money
People buy for emotional reasons and justify it after the sell with logic. If your site builds enough confidence in your product or service then your reader will buy from you regardless of price.
How Not To Make An Ugly Website
I thought the best thing to do was look around the web a name a couple of things that a lot of people do that they should not. Maybe this will help others not make the same mistakes.
1. Never Ever have an “Under Construction” on a website. All websites are under construction all the time.
2. Stay with one style of font. I know there are a lot of styles that are really cool but the site will look a lot better if you only use one.
3. Use 2 font colors and no more. Again there are some really cool colors but trying to use them all does not help anyone.
4. Scrolling text. If someone is trying to read the text on your site and something keeps moving around in the corner of there eye it really makes it tough to stay focused.
5. Don’t use pop-up Windows. No one likes them and most people see them as unwanted ads and close them without looking at them. That’s if they don’t already have some type of pop-up blocker installed.
6. Flash introduction. Everyone already knows that this does not work. It has been tested and users hate them. So do not use them.
7. Opening New Browser Windows. I hate when I finish looking at a site and find I have to close 20 windows. Do not open new windows.
These are only a couple of things that make up a really badly designed website. The list could go on and on but I wanted to point out a couple.
Let’s work together and make the web better for everyone.
