“Right and wrong do not exist in graphic design. There is only effective and non-effective communication.” – Peter Bilak
Look at your website, now back at me, now back at your website, now back at me…
How effective is your site design? How difficult (or easy) it is to navigate makes all the difference between losing a new visitor and gaining a new subscriber (or generating a lead).
Some Things to Consider…
Nevermind the design at the moment (color, features, etc.). Let’s focus instead on your site’s architecture.
- How easy is it to navigate? If you sell real estate, how many clicks do I have to make before I land on your “Home Search” page? If you’re selling a product, how many clicks do I have to make before I land on your product page?
- Can I find what I’m looking for after a quick 5-second scan of your website or do I have to dig to find your content?
- If I’m in one of your internal pages, can I find my way back to your homepage if I need to? (You’d be surprised, some pages don’t have a “Homepage” link on their navigation and it’s difficult to get there without hitting the back-browser tab 5 times).
- If I need to contact you, can I find your contact information easily (on your About/Contact page or on your sidebar)? Some people display this prominently on their site. Others bury it.
- When I look at your various buttons, your images and “Call To Actions,” what message are they conveying? Is your messaging clear? Buy here? Subscribe here? Register here? Contact me here? So on and so forth…
If I can’t find what I’m looking for in under a minute (or much less), I’m outta there! Think about that for a minute. Now look at your design and ask your self, “am I effectively communicating with my visitors?”
How can you communicate better?
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Great points!
This was my thought pattern recently which is why I wanted social sharing sites to be prominent on my blog. I couldn't see my feed buttons carefully and it seemed hidden. I also added a custom header that I think brings out the blog a little more. I'm still tweaking it to my taste and I'll be redesigning the background soon to match my Twitter. It's all about consistency, right? 🙂
Suki: Yes, consistency is totally important and I love it when I come across a site who's brand/design is consistent across multiple networks!
I definitely think that the RSS icons are much more prominent now. I know they were there before, but yes, they weren't as large as maybe they should've been. And I'm diggin' the new header!!
As you work on it, just ask yourself, what do I want to communicate? Am I achieving that with the changes I'm making and features I'm adding? If you are, you're all set to go!
Thanks for the comment Suki!