Your website needs a few cuts. Give it a trim and make it work for you!
Spam Magnets
If you have a link that opens a new email for you (in Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail, etc) then the chances are you spend most mornings deleting invites from foreign dignitaries and shady pharmaceutical companies. The reason for this is that people building spam contact lists will scour websites using mailto links. Talk to your designer and get him/her to use the contact form instead, or just use an image of your email address.
Blur
Damon Albarn can stay, but that lack of focus is going to – hey look, it’s raining outside. I bet the grass will – is that the time, or did I forget to put new batteries in my mouse? Lack of focus will confuse your visitors. Where are they meant to go? What should they click on next? How do they buy right now?
Fake Budgets
Stock libraries are great for adding clean, well lit images of exactly what you need to illustrate your point. But they have to fit! If you are a one person business, it is really obvious that you are not likely to spend thousands of dollars hiring models, renting or scouting a location, hiring lighting and a photographer for one tiny little image. That office space full of beautiful people doesn’t make your website look more professional. It’s just a lie.
Glory Days
You went to school where? I googled it and I don’t think it’s there any more. The chances are pretty good that most of your prospects care less about your schooling than you do. OK, you went to school. What have you done since then?*
You WILL Read the Ad
Many sites, particularly the most prominent technology blogs, feature ads that very cleverly pop-up right over where I’m trying to read. I want to read the article. If I wanted an Audi, I would read the ad in the sidebar. Now, let me read the article!
Bigger is Badder
Websites are clever little fellas! You can upload pictures straight from your 8MP camera onto your computer, upload them to your site and just tell the browser to display it really small, so it’s fits on your web page. Brilliant. Now you have a picture the size of your dining table being squished into a tiny little space that is going to take the time it takes to read this entire sentence to load. By the time it loads, I’ve forgotten why I was even at this site. All pictures on your site should be ACTUAL size.
Your ‘Puter Sucks
The site looks great. But, the designer only tested it in Internet Explorer because that’s what most people use anyway. Market share says that the vast majority of people use Windows, and all those people have Internet Explorer. So, he/she put a note at the bottom saying ‘This site is optimized for use on Internet Explorer’. Not only does this exclude a LOT of people, it makes users feel that they need a new browser just to view one site. But worse than that, it makes the designer/developer look super lazy.
Web design is not just about making a site aesthetically pleasing. It’s also about knowing what to avoid, and what to include in your site. These are just a few ways you can make your website more honest, clean, efficient and happier in general. If you have any questions about web design and how your site (new or existing) can be build to help your business (rather than hinder it), email me.
*By the way, if you want to know where I went to school and what I studied, just ask. It’s no secret!