Your website is as a much a part of your sales team as the smoothest hawker in town. The more time and effort you dedicate to working with and trusting your web design team the better your web design will be. So how can you make sure your website is better than your competitors are? How can you stimulate visitors to becoming users?

Creating an attractive converting website is easier than your think. Your web design team is experienced in producing functional design that focuses on simplicity, easy usage, demonstration and promotion of your web site objectives, and management of the over all project. In this article, we will review the 5 misconceptions that commonly derail website design.

Misconception #1: Home Page Confusion

Just as every in person sale begins with a smile and a handshake your web site design should also begin by putting its best foot forward. First impressions count. Your home page is the salesman’s smile acknowledging your visitor’s presence. If you’ve spinach between your teeth, your visitor will become focused on that rather than your product. Therefore, it’s important that your web site home page be clean. In fact, it should dazzle.

The content on your website is like a handshake. Once you’ve acknowledged a visitor you personally engage them. Unfocused content is like offering a limp handshake. Hard sell content is like a hand-crunching handshake. The idea behind good web site content is to build a physical and mental relationship between a customer’s problem and your solution.

Good website design, a combination of graphics and text, creates good content and introduces your welcoming engaging solution. It’s not about flash; it’s about substance. Place your best content on your home page. Tease the user to delve further – delve not hunt. Provide clear consistent navigation that allows users to find their own version of your solution.

When possible, avoid large flashy headers and endless roll over navigation. As we keep reiterating, the web, while visual, is still a textual medium. And, while a picture may be worth a thousand words images should be used in a context that means those thousand words aren’t left to chance. Graphic design elements should illustrate and illuminate your content and website objectives. Anything else is simply confusing and distracting from your message.  

Misconception #2: Words Aren’t Important

Content is a combination of the graphic and textual. Each should support the other. Just as unneeded or inappropriate images should be avoided, meandering unfocused copy is a death sentence. 

Recently we presented an article, Does Your Website Copy Promote Your Marketing Strategy?, that focused on the importance of good copy. Because it is so important, we return to the topic.

Your home page needs to get to your business point as soon as possible. Essential information a visitor needs and wants to make a commitment to become a customer should be introduced as soon as possible. Yet, at the same time, it needs to written in a manner that doesn’t make the visitor feel hurried or pushed. Instead, good copy provides answers to questions that haven’t been explicitly asked.

You know a need exists. Your visitor does as well that is why they have come to your web page. They are looking for not a solution but their solution. Tone and word choice are important factors in good copy; you want to address each user appropriately but because it’s difficult, it not impossible, to tailor your website copy for each user you must shoot for the mean average of your demographic.

It takes a practiced hand to strike a balance between offering too little versus too much information. This is seen on many home pages that go on and on and on. Again, we know most people don’t read the web as much as they scan it. They are looking for a trigger stimulus. When triggered they stop and examine more closely. If they aren't triggered within approximately 3 seconds, they leave or to use the web term "bounce".

Therefore, web site copy should be not only well written but also well constructed. Web sites unlike print exist on an n-dimension. Pages are linked. Pages are scrolled. Therefore, it’s a case of not only what you say but also when you say it. Essential information needs to be placed above the scroll.

An example of this is a home page that’s placed an exceedingly long about us section above the scroll. Typically, who you are is a secondary purchase determinant. A primary determinant is what you are offering and how it will benefit the user. Yet, all too often, a user has to leave the home page and go to a products section to find this information. And, all too often, that 3-second window of opportunity in which a visitor is triggered into making the first commitment to your website is lost.

Misconception #3: Web Design is Fill in the Blanks

However, it remains that about half our clients initiate web design before copy has been created. If a business owner believes that all they need is a great design and then they can just fill in the blanks with copy, they are mistaken.

If a business owner thinks a web design team is merely a group of talented artists, than they are also mistaken. There is a difference between artists and designers. Artists produce work for themselves. They are interested in getting their point of view across. Designers are utilitarian. The goal of any good design is to be used. Therefore, while a good web designer does understand grids, columns, layout and graphic design principles. A great web designer understands user interaction, functionality and action calls.

Your web design team is interested in creating an attractive web site. However, its primary goal is to create a usable website and, more importantly, a converting website.

When a design team obtains a contract one of the first things done is to interview a client. Some design teams present the interview in the form of a questionnaire. It’s common for business owners to become quite uncomfortable during this interview. In fact, some business owners can be down right hostile. This is especially true for those who are introducing a new product or service. It’s very common to receive a questionnaire with over half the questions unanswered. Or, to answer questions with “you don’t need to know that”, the adult version of “none of your beeswax”.

But, your web design team does need to know. Our questions are not prompted by nosiness. We are not interested in stealing your ideas. We are interested in being able to create a web site that presents your company and your ideas or products in the best light. In order to do this, a web design team needs to know more than you think they do.

Just as a web site visitor is not looking for a solution but their solution, your web site team is looking for your answers. The more information you can provide before design begins the more successful your website will be. Adopting a fill in the blank attitude is a sure fire way to guarantee disharmony between your site’s design and its goals. 

Misconception #4: I’m Unique! I’m Innovative! I know what’s best!

The problem with the “I’m Unique! I’m Innovative! I know what’s best!” mentality is it is all about the “I” and unless you are appealing to clones then it rarely works. Again, a good website is used; a great website is converted.

A truly unique product or service has no competitors. Rarely is this true. Unfortunately, too often business owners decide they will show their individuality through poor web design. Web designers are often asked to introduce visual clutter, unusual navigation and personal color choices.

In the design world, we have many idioms to express this misconception but the nicest and most accurate is “Opposites repel.” This misconception of if your design is the exact opposite of your competitors then you have made an impact is false. Well, true in the fact that you do stand out in a crowd but for all the wrong reasons.

The business owners cry of “But, I don’t want to be like everyone else” is lost in the reality of how the web works. Users have expectations that if not met are lost. Business owners who think, “My idea is so cool and innovative that users will take the time to learn how to use it or download the required software to use it” are extremely mistaken. Users will not.

Leave innovation for actual product development. Emphasize your individuality in product features and benefits. But, leave your website design in the hands of those who know best, your web design team.

If you correct these misconceptions then your business is one-step closer to having a premium-converting website. Because ForeScene is all about solutions, next week we’ll offer some Web Site Design Tips that if considered and used will deliver a and even more successful website.