Don’t Make it Hard to Buy
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Imagine going into a grocery store to buy a loaf of bread. Before you can grab the bread, the store makes you look at other products first. Then, before you can check out, they ask you for your name, address, phone, e-mail, and want you to register a user name and password. Ridiculous, of course…
Cutting Through “Web-Speak” – What Web Clients Should Know
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The relationship between your IP, web host, and domain registrar can be very confusing, but a website owner must understand the role of each. Most importantly, the web client needs to have access to their domain registrar, or potentially risk the loss of your domain name! The entities are…
Mistake 2: Too Much On The Home Page
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It’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting everything on the home page. You have a lot to offer your web site visitors, but it should be carefully presented.
Think of the problem this way, you’re in Vegas; adding one more neon sign to a storefront isn’t going to make you go in. So adding one more “must-have” on the home page when there are ten or twenty things to look at won’t help.
When a web page overwhelms the visitor with options, the visitor will look at nothing or just pick the first thing that might be what they want. Rather than have visitors leave your site or guess which product/service they need, you should focus your message and present a few (3 or 4) options from which to choose.
LeBron James’ Decision: The dangers of out-of-control marketing and ego-centric PR
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Last night was the single cruelest thing an athlete has done to a city. It was cold. It was calculated. And it was done for maximum media exposure.
Obviously marketing and public relations are meant to generate interest and get everyone talking. However, a careful plan to manage all that attention is crucial, otherwise things can easily turn against you.
Mistake 1: Designing the Site for the Owner
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It’s your site, and it should look the way you want it to, right? Wrong. The site should be designed for the web visitor/customer; not the boss.
Yes, you should be happy with the design, but the site isn’t supposed to sell you—it’s supposed to sell your target market. You’re already convinced of the merits of your products or services, but your market needs to be convinced.
Mistakes I Made on My First Site
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Before we start our series of common web mistakes, I should probably share the story of my first site. They say that experience helps us avoid mistakes, but mistakes are how we gain experience. So this is a tale of how I became “experienced!”
In 1996, after several years of building and running a handheld computing forum on AOL, I decided to apply my online “expertise” to my own manufacturing company. While I did avoid a number of still-common web design mistakes, I did make one—I designed for the owner rather than the audience.
Four Common Web Site Mistakes – Intro
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In the past, we’ve made mistakes, and learned from them. Mistakes aren’t bad – just try to learn quickly.
“It’s important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up,” says Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3 in an article on Pixar in Wired. “We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That’s why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible.”
So here are four common website mistakes that we’ll explore in subsequent posts:
1. Designing the site for the owner rather than the audience.
2. Too much on the home page.
3. Splash page and focusing on animations rather than good content.
4. The “ghost town” web site last updated 2006.
Design Tips Blog for Clients
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Intended for clients, this blog will make suggestions on social media, web development, content management systems, graphic design, logos and corporate ID, and marketing. We will refrain from any techno-speak–this blog will be about current and potential clients.
We hope you will find our posts helpful and thought-provoking.
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