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5 Surefire Ways to Annoy Visitors on Your Website
By Chris Behan
As business owners, we all have the burning desire to share with the world what makes us different from our competitors. For your company, maybe it’s your corporate leadership’s combined 100 years of experience, or an ability to turn a project around in record time. Regardless of the message you want to convey, like most business owners, your first instinct may be to take what works in traditional marketing mediums and apply it to the design of your website. But is that really the best strategy for giving visitors to your website what they want?
This article will take a lighthearted look at 5 major web design mistakes that will surely annoy anyone visiting your website. It will also offer direction to help you appropriately communicate your company’s unique attributes, thus maximizing your website’s impact on each visitor.
- Flash Introductions & Animation
We’ve all seen the highly animated Flash introductions that companies love to use for their websites, but the reality of it is, we all rush to click the “Skip Intro” link as fast as we possibly can. Remember, one of the greatest things about using the Internet is how easily and quickly you can get information, and having this Flash intro just slows the process.
Also, if you decide to use animation on your site, make sure never to have more than one thing moving, blinking or flashing at the same time. Sites that have too much animation distract from the core message and create a poor user experience.
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The Sound of Music… Can Be Hard to Listen to.
While adding music or sound effects to your website may seem like a good idea, it’s best to avoid this temptation. Websites with sound usually have a significantly higher bounce rate, meaning visitors hit one page on the site and then immediately leave. This is an even larger problem for retail sites, since most people do their online shopping at work. If music unexpectedly begins to play over their speakers, they’ll close the window as quickly as possible to avoid attracting unwanted attention.
- Internal Link Structure & Organization
It is extremely important to organize your site in such a way that everything on it is easy for visitors to find. Sites that require potential customers to dig deep into the link structure to find what they want will certainly have a lower conversion rate when it comes to turning visitors into leads and sales.
I almost always recommend using a left navigation bar for a website in conjunction with a horizontal top navigation bar. Use the left navigation to feature your core products and services, and be specific and descriptive when choosing links for it. Keep in mind that some of the most successful sites on the Internet use left navigation designs, including Amazon and eBay, and modeling your site’s navigation after these highly visited sites will bring a level of comfort to people visiting yours.
Reserve your top navigation bar for contact and corporate information to help ensure that visitors can quickly learn more about your company and then easily contact you.
- It’s All About Us…or Is It?
Good web design should represent four things: who you are, what you do, where you do it, and who you are trying to appeal to. As business owners, we are really good at conveying who we are and what we do, but we sometimes forget the last two.
“Where you do it” only applies if you are operating your business on a local level. If you are, it is important to have imagery in the design that represents the city or state in which you operate. The last factor, “who we are trying to appeal to,” is left out more often than not. Using imagery of the people that use your product or service is very important. It helps visitors visualize themselves using your product or service and gives them a greater level of comfort with your website. Buying a product or service is usually an emotional decision, so creating this connection is vital.
- Calls To Action
Too many websites make this basic mistake: They forget to sell! Having clear and consistent calls to action throughout your entire website is critical, and where you place those calls to action is equally important. There is nothing more frustrating to a visitor than for them to like what they see on your site, but not be able to quickly locate your contact information.
Studies known as “heat mapping” tell us where people’s eyes tend to look on a website. In most cases, the hottest, or most viewed, part of a website is the top, left, one-third of the site. Place a clear call to action there, along with your phone number. There is another hot spot on your website at the very top right of your site. Place another call to action in that location.
By strategically placing your calls to action in these spots, you will make it easy for visitors to contact you, in turn increasing your conversion rate.
Effectively creating a website that balances corporate messaging, usability, and appealing design can be a daunting task, but using the tips above as a guide can help. Before you begin the design process, have a detailed plan in place that centers around user experience and you’ll not only save countless hours on site adjustments, but you’ll also create a better user experience that ultimately increases sales.
About the Author
Chris Behan is the President and Chief Optimization Officer of Socius Marketing, Inc. (www.sociusmarketing.com), Tampa’s top-ranked search engine optimization company, which provides Internet marketing services to small, medium, and large businesses looking to expand their online presence. With offices in Tampa and Atlanta and clients across the country, Socius Marketing is one of the largest, and fastest-growing online lead generation firms in the United States. Specializing in organic, white-hat search engine optimization, Chris has more than 11 years of Internet marketing experience and has helped hundreds of companies generate leads online. Chris can be reached at chris@sociusmarketing.com or by calling (813) 282-8300. – Offices Rocky Point, Tampa
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