These days, everyone's a Web designer. With relatively simply Web design packages readily available, lots of people are doffing their new, shiny Web design hats and taking a stab at bringing their business online. But is this wise, or is it giving them a headache?
If you have the time, the flair, and the vision for your organization's website, you will no doubt save some dough in designing yourself. But are you leveraging technology or bastardizing it? There are two schools of thought on this issue. Whichever school is your alma mater, we can all agree that there are some basic mistakes many website designers make, and these are best avoided. Let's take a look at these "common" mistakes with an eye toward making them less common.
1- Overly Wordy Web Designs
Well, maybe this isn't completely about design after all. But when you look at a page and there are too many words, there's a perception problem, a comprehension problem, and a design problem. Good design is clean and concise. If your text is making your momma yawn, you know you've typed too too far. How to slice it down? Spin doctors say everything can be boiled down to three main things. That may not be true - -of course your business model and offerings are paragons of complexity and obscurity that must be explained in 10,000 Arabian nights of detailed prose - but what we can agree on is, why give your secrets away? Be brief. The rule of thumb for Web copy is, unless you are behind the login of a subscription service where information is actually for sale, don't give it away. Whet the appetite for the online visitor to actually call or email you. Drive them to action. Don't satiate-tempt.
2- Ugly Web Designs
You probably thought I'd find a nice word for it, didn't you? Let's face it, lots of sites are plain ugly. What does ugly mean? Like beauty, you know it when you see it. In poor Web design, "ugly" often takes the form of pixilated graphics that weren't sized for the screen, a lack of integrated design, and the use of stock (free) clip art instead of artwork designed specifically for your pages. And my favorite - jumpy animated graphics and scrolling banners that have less artistic merit than a line of ants tracing cookie crumbs in your kitchen.
How can you avoid ugly? There are only two methods that I've seen work - have someone with artistic talent and aesthetic design your site, or, simplify your site to the point of pure text and basic buttons. (And if you do that, make sure all your text is the same font and all your buttons are the same size. Preferably black on white.)
3- Your Website is Useless
Dare I say that? That there are actually useless websites out there? Thousands of them. If your website doesn't have a point to make, a raison d'être, a mission statement of its very own, it's a design flaw your visitors will perceive - and leave. How do you know this has occurred? When you view your Web log or your report of website visitors, 90% of them come to the home page and run, never digging any deeper. This means all your Web visitors can think of, when they see you, is something else. Counteract this by making sure your website is relevant to more than just your ego (unless, of course, your ego IS the reason you have a website). That way, your target demographic - your target customer - should see something they like and stay.
4- Lack of Traffic Flow Planning
Similar to useless, but less harsh, a lack of an overall traffic plan is a common flaw in Web design, especially amateur design. A good website is tooled for its user. The Web design and development team literally imagines that ideal customer coming, and designs the perfect path for them. It's like when your girlfriend is coming over, and you plant a rose by the door, a trail of rose petals to the . . . um, kitchen . . . (this is posted on the Internet after all!) and there you are twirling a glass of Chianti. Think she'll stay for desert? Absolutely! And that's the way great Web design does it . . . First, there's some thought to the demographic analysis of the potential customer or visitor to the site. The top three or five reasons someone may visit the site are well considered, and actual "information paths" are created for those situations. At the end of the path, the visitor is invited to more action than click-throughs, and has an opportunity to whip out their credit card, send an email, or download something fascinating. (You of course, know this works because you track your customers.) Which brings me to Flaw #5
5- Lack of Tracking
You may have the most beautisimous (kidding) website on Krypton, but how do you know it does what you want it to do without tracking features? At a bare minimum, you want to know the monthly visits to each page and where those visitors are coming from (in the form of referring URLs). You also want to know which pages you've created that are "sticky" - the pages that tend to keep people involved for a while. These metrics are important because they should directly lead you back to your customer. Did you succeed in creating paths for your visitors they want to follow, or do you need to re-tweak or re-write some of the copy? Your tracking program is the only way you'll be able to measure whether or not your website is meeting its mission.
As you, savvy reader, have by now deduced, these common mistakes all point to a lack of forethought on the part of the would-be web designer. People, especially results-oriented entrepreneurial types, tend to want to "dig in" to an application, push the buttons, and create something. But good Web design takes forethought. That's why so many people outsource it - time is not one of their luxuries. The best professional Web design firms will not throw a suite of pages up for you. They will talk you through the demographics of your visitor, the mission of your website, and the "critical paths" of visitation. It's boring, but it works. If you want Web presence that gets results, you can't skip these initial steps. If you think through your customer's needs, and create a site to meet them, you'll avoid all the most common mistakes in Web design.
