When Designing a Website, Keeping It Simple Is Sometimes Better
Five Star SEO design stragety is to focus on a results driven website. It can be easy to get caught up in all the latest bells and whistles when designing a website, adding unnecessary advanced features while assuming that more is better.
This can be counter-productive to what you are trying to achieve through your website design. Visitors to the site can be overwhelmed by an overabundance of features and special effects, leaving the eye unable to focus on one part of the site and absorb the information there. The point, the advantages that your company has to offer, can be lost in this too flashy website, and the message within the site’s content becomes so diluted that you lose business.
This is a common problem with amateur web designers, assuming more features and flash00y effects mean a better website. When the goal of the website should instead be a healthy mix of conveying your product’s benefits and turning visitors over to paying customers, while also creating the content in such a way that will give a favorable positioning with the search engines. This healthy mix of appealing to visitors while drawing traffic from search engines is the ultimate sign of a well-designed site.
Focus on a Results Driven Website, Instead of Getting Caught Up in the Fancy Features
Some more advanced features will contribute to your overall website, giving visitors a better experience and understanding of your products and services. But in other instances, the business owner can get caught up in the new-fangled features that a website can have, overwhelming the site with too much.
These advanced features, when not necessary to sell the product, can have the opposite effect by distracting the visitor from the task at hand. It isn’t uncommon for a web client to request advanced features on their website.
While we are happy to oblige when this will work to make the site more effective and a better overall experience for the visitor, there are other times when the advanced features can detract from the website’s goal of growing your business.
Clients may have seen a feature on a competitor’s website. This may include anything from instant pop-up boxes when a visitor comes to your site to streaming video or music or your own banners ads scrolling across the page.
In some circumstances, these features may add value to the website but not always. It is important to not feel like your website must have all the bells and whistles, which can easily overwhelm visitors. Instead, focus on the things you do well, with an eye-catching design and quality content to get the message across to potential customers.
Website Data Shows What Works for Design, Features, Content and More
There is a plethora of data and information showing what makes a website effective. This may vary slightly from industry to industry, but in general the data is true for most websites. A clean design, with vibrant colors and imagery, plenty of white space and legible easy to read text are some of the most favorable features in a website. Adding too many additional features can confuse the visitor, as their eyes don’t know where to look on the page. This chaotic feature overload can quickly overwhelm visitors, causing them to mentally check out and navigate away from the website.
There are now years of data showing what works for website design and this information should not be ignored when considering your website design. Countless studies have been conducted on control groups, learning what appeals more to visitors to a website. These studies have measured many factors, including where the eyes are drawn on the screen, attention span, and the feelings after visiting a website. Data continues to show repeatedly that website visitors prefer a clean design with white space to allow the eyes and mind to easily absorb and process the information. When a website has an overabundance of information or design functionality, this can turn the visitor off, having the opposite of the intended effect.
Trust the Web Design Professionals at Five Star SEO and the Experience that We Offer
There is a reason why many businesses turn to a professional web designer to create or revise a website. Armed with the data of what makes a website effective, a professional web designer can help to create a site that will get the job done. At Five Star SEO, we take the time to understand our client’s business and the goals that they have for the website. Based on this information, we can design a highly effective site that will work for you in attaining these goals. Too often business owners and management think they have the answer to their website design. This is based on their own personal preference, instead of the decades of knowledge and experience that a web designer can offer.
The job of your business’ website is an important task and one that is best not left to chance. A professional can help you to create the ideal design, content and features that will most appeal to your target audience.
When done properly, this will exponentially increase the amount of time visitors spend on your site. Time spent on your site has a direct correlation with the ability to turn visitors into customers, particularly when you have powerful content that speaks to the visitor about the benefits of your products and services.
We Take A Data Drive Approach
At Five Star SEO we have been designing websites for businesses for over a decade. By studying the data on how visitors navigate websites and this experience, we are able to create the most effective website for our clients. These are attractive and appealing to the client’s target market, with only necessary features that add to the site instead of those that act like a distraction to the visitor. Through this thoughtful design and creation process, Five Star SEO can create quality sites that will work towards attaining your site’s ultimate goal of attracting new customers and winning new business.