Attract more customers to your website The layout of your website: how NOT to do it
The layout of your website: How NOT to do it
Our previous newsletters provided several useful tips on the layout of your website. Here, we offer a glance at a few layout choices up for improvement.
“The first thing to be noticed on any website, is a photo/ video of my company!”
An excellent idea, if said photo/video holds a sound call-to-action that inspires the visitor to do exactly what you want – usually to become a customer. If such is not the case, it is more efficient to allot that space to key information, allowing it to reach your visitors immediately.
“I want full control of what visitors see on my website. Every page should be an image with all text embedded!”
This has a lot of disadvantages: it takes longer to load the page, it is difficult to update, it is impractical on mobile devices, etc. The worst part is search engines only partially index images, through the text sent in the alt-section of the -tag, which can never be as meaningful or valuable as the text itself.
“My website needs to attract attention, so the more sound and movement, the better! And every page should have a completely different layout!”
Research into the usability of websites shows that visitors are mostly annoyed by ‘moving items’. Use them wisely. A second source of aggravation are websites that instantly play music. In any case, provide an off switch. Mind you, moving items and music can offer additional value, entirely dependent on the design and purpose of the website. Thoroughly consider before using them and keep it functional.
“The text on my website should really jump out. Make everything big and bold!”
Using too large a font quickly comes across as pushy. In addition, most recent browsers allow modification of the font size. Using standard sizing is probably the best idea. Using only bold makes text more difficult to read, especially on a screen. A good idea is emphasising important words or keywords by using bold. Just don’t go overboard.
Next blog post: the content of your website: an effective mix of text and images
