Websites.

Are they a necessary evil?

They are almost like fashions.

What’s in and what’s out?

Or out of date?

Do you want a website that looks good or one that draw’s traffic?

Can’t it do both?

I don’t think so….

I recently looked at a template design for a webpage that had so many glaring errors in design functionality…. yet it looked good.

Do you remember that scene in the movie Heartburn where Jack Nicholson talks about the new kitchen being added onto his house? Trouble was, to enter the kitchen from the house you needed to leave the house and walk in through an outside door.

Nobody had thought to have an internal doorway from the room in the house into the kitchen!

Sometimes people have websites without connections. Or logic. Or reason.

Superbowl ads.

I watch the superbowl ads and sometimes I wonder what is being advertised.

And yet these companies spend all that money on the advert and on the airtime. But forget the message. And the purpose.

What’s missing in most cases is these three things, eloquently put by advertising guru Leo Burnett:

“Here’s what I’ve got, here’s what it will do for you, and here’s how to get it.”

Burnett, one of the greatest ad men of the 20th century, said this is what advertising needs to say to people.

I say it’s what your website needs to say to people…

Top Right:

The latest trend appears to be to have left and right corridors of space on a website, yet the eyes naturally gravitate towards the top right for instruction and direction.

I guess it originates from reading old style snail-mail letters.

Name. Address. Phone. Email.

All on the top right corner of the letter….

So I think the top right of your website should say:

How to contact you.

What to contact you about [an offer]

With a button.

Social media buttons:

You spend all that money getting visitors toy your page, and the first thing you offer them is a button to click to your Facebook page?

Doh!

They click it, see they have 5 Notifications on Facebook, and a friend request….

And poof. They are gone.

Doh!

Do not put social media icons and links in prime places…. hide them at the bottom of your scrolled page.

If you have to.

They are a distraction.

They are not Boy Scout badges.

Or war medals.

They are one-way escape routes from your website….

Watch the fold:

Most websites have a continuous scroll.

I like it. It’s clean.

But here’s a tip:

Make sure that your next subject appears “above the fold”.

So many times I see the next item below the fold…. or I don’t see it because that’s where it is…

Your site visitor must see that there is an image poking up at the bottom of the page…tempting them to scroll…make this your priority…

Make sure that it is understood by the visitor to your webpage that there is something at the bottom that they need to scroll to…so make it glaringly obvious for them to do so…

Consistency:

If you are going to have a call to action on your page, have multiple buttons with the same call to action.

I would not have calls to multiple actions. I’d have multiple calls to the same action.

Make it clear that this is the next step for your viewer.

“Download your free report now!”

Or

“Make an appointment now”

Use one bait to catch one type of fish now.

Don’t go fishing for multiple fish types at the one time.

And have your buttons lead to a landing page that captures their email and name on that page. Don’t try to capture this data with boxes on the home page. That’s a turn off.

Hopefully these tips can have your website looking like it has a purpose.

Otherwise, you have a website that is as effective as winking in the dark.

When you wink in the dark, you know what you are doing, but nobody else knows you are doing it….

*****

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