Private: Designing Your Web – By Liz Donehue

I’m currently on Hour 8 of being on the internet. I’ve responded to emails, made some proofreading revisions, and scanned CNN. Unfortunately for me, a frequent visitor of the Atlanta-based news source, CNN has chosen to remodel their website without reviewing it fully before releasing it to the masses. The site is slow, text is showing up where it shouldn’t, and videos begin to play without my consent. The site is just kind of happening to me.

A website redesign is not an easy job. When you’re creating new padding, content, drop down menus, comment sections, headers, and icons, it must be extensively reviewed before going live. Websites must be sleek, clear, and concise. Businesses can make a lot of mistakes when it comes to marketing themselves within their web presence, leading to a gain of poor business, or possibly no business at all.

First of all, the homepage should be the “You Are Here” of your business, not a collection of weird phone numbers, outdated photographs, or graphs that don’t pertain to your business because you simply Googled “graph” due to needing one. Your homepage is the “Go!” square, and you want to make others take the trip all the way around to Broadway and Park Place. Here are some less than popular features and ideas that are often implemented on various homepages across the web:

• Color scheme: Most companies pull their color scheme from their logo (if you don’t have one, get one), but there are others that sought advice from Janet in Accounting and used ALL of the possible colors. If your color scheme matches the entire palette of Crayola, it’s time to narrow your options and avoid giving your potential clients a brain aneurysm.
• Text: Websites often put an entire Hemingway novel on their homepage, and I’m not talking about “The Old Man and the Sea.” The average website visitor has an attention span of 15 seconds when it comes to reading content online (so props to you for making it this far in the post!) You aren’t The New York Times, or the epic poem Homer scratched into what I’m assuming must have been thousands of slabs of stone. Keeping your text as minimal as possible maintains a visitor’s attention.
• Navigation: The webpage loads. What do you click on first? Each section of the website should be easily defined and located. Avoid using graphics and text that look like links that actually are not. Headers and drop downs should do exactly that: head, and drop down.
• Anything that may have been popular in 1996: Does your website have pop-ups? Poorly animated clip art? Does your website play music unsuitable for most occasions? Stop it. Stop it right now. Your website should be a solid representation of who you are as a company, and not the beta version of MySpace.

I’m sorry if I’m inadvertently shoving your website into the garbage chute. If any of the bullets above describe the uneasy state of your web presence, there are some steps you can take in order to better a visitor’s experience:

• Video: too much content can often be replaced by a video. Often times creating a video will take longer than having Debbie from HR write a quick blurb over her lunch break, but it will be worth saving space, and you can have more freedom in what goes into this platform for content. You can showcase live testimonials, locations, your decision-makers, and products and services. Please note that it may want to be up to your visitor’s discretion to start the video themselves, and not have it automatically start upon viewing certain pages.
• Show Your Face: A lot of companies use a “Man Behind the Curtain” tactic, where they use representations of people at your business, but not the actual people themselves. Having a headshot of a person in charge along with their social media links can boost your presence even further by giving your team a face and not just a name.
• Social Media Links: To add to the above, if you have social media pages connected to your business, make sure they are present on your website. I spend roughly 10 hours a day on various social media channels, but I don’t spend the same time on your website. Creating an avenue between both is important for your visitor to see that you want to connect on all available networks.
• Mobile Device Accessibility: Did you know that 60 to 70% of potential or existing clients are viewing your website on a mobile device? Like your website on a computer, you want your website on a mobile device to be just as fluid. One thing businesses don’t often look into is how their website will appear on a much smaller UI. Zooming in, scrolling endlessly, and using 4-point font will make your mobile visitor strain harder, thus making it more difficult for them to be hooked on your content.
• Outside Help: If the above seems like the impossible, consider hiring a team whose specialty it is to implement these features for you. Side by side, you’ll be able to work with the current features you have as well as creating and combining content for a sleek, updated look.

Liz Donehue
Prospectr Marketing