When you consider starting a new web project for a design, interface or management system, common mistakes made preparing those is that as time progresses, you will eventually decide to add more features, more elements, more information, functionality and so forth. It is not wrong to add more and more to a website; but it is wrong to add unnecessary clutter to a website. It will make it harder to browse, and harder to get used to. Visitors would be overwhelmed by a lot of things they don’t want to see or do, and eventually it’s a turn-off. Here are a few tips to making that work better for you.
Put emphasis on content that matters
Get realistic; a big amount of visitors, would prefer to find what they need for now. In the future, they will know your website is trustful, and might recognize it a second time when they search for something. Or better yet, they will bookmark your page the first time! Try putting emphasis on content that matters. What does that mean? Anything that you know only a few people would care about, can go in a smaller font, be faded out, or as a footer/small sidebar for example. Look at all the greatest websites and bloggers: Any ‘share’ options are put aside to leave room for the main article or section to be more easily seen and noticed.
Less clutter ≠ less features
Make as many features as you want. Heck, put more features than anyone would ever use. But use them right. Know where to place the features, and know how to keep them hidden to those that don’t use them, while visible to anyone that looks for them. For example: I’m making a website for product reviews. Suggesting reviews are public for anyone who signs up; I need to keep the features organized right. I would prefer to keep any reviewing or editing tools available to only those who need to see them, and even then, only keep them when the user wants to. So I might make a dropdown for reviewing tools instead of keeping it visible at all times.
Conclusion is that features have an important role in managing interest for your visitors: but keep it right and keep everything in place. Hopefully main content will get the recognition it deserves when you design your website.
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009
10 Things Visitors Look for in a Website
Novice web designers often don't know how to make their visitors like their designs. This could hurt anyone -- from blogger to developer to designer, so here is a list of things common readers look for when entering a website:
- Find what they're looking for
As simple as it sounds - visitors want to find what they were coming in your website for in the first place - without a lot of hassle. Visitors want to find what they're looking for quickly, without the need to browse too much, or they might give up and go somewhere else. Which might teach them to ignore your website next time, because they're uninterested in actively searching for too long. - Simplicity & readability
Websites that are too complex looking, have too much clutter and are generally hard to look at are badly designed websites - people would have hard time focusing on what they need and the clutter will only interrupt. That's why you have to keep the design simple enough for visitors to immediately find the part of the page they were looking for - and not hate looking at it! Which leads to the next point... - Scannable content
If there's one thing visitors like, is being able to quickly skip to only a tiny part they're interested in. If you're a blogger or any content writer, you're giving content to your readers to read -- but what if they only came for a specific segment? Or what if they don't feel like reading something long, and would like to simply get a quick point or question across? Without scannability put in question, visitors would have to read entire articles just to find something small in them that they’d like to find… which would lead them to giving up rather quickly, or at least feel frustrated and thinking twice before going into your website again. - Appealing colors
Yes, people don’t like websites that are too flashy and hurt the eyes. Keep the main design limited to having a color scheme of 3-4 colors, and it will be more pleasant on the eyes. Also try to keeping the colors matching and make sure they go together – or it might be hard to read or simply annoying. - Images
People are suckers for pictures, diagrams and the likes – if you add simple pictures to a post or website, it will be more fun to look at, and might give the visitor a better of understanding of what they’re reading. - Fine content
Of course, you can’t ignore quality – there’s no real trick to that. You just have to keep the content real and not say anything you can’t back up, or simply talk nonsense. Leave an impression of professionalism and care for the content, and you will attract readers to hear what you have to say. - Sense of organization
This sort-of relates to the simplicity section – but still falls a bit away. Try and keep things in your websites organized. It’s a lot easier if the visitor doesn’t have to scan through multiple pages to find one article they’re looking for, or find things out of place. - Fashion & trend
Keeping a trendy, appealing website is one of the major keys to making your readers like your website – try finding a successful website and see what it looks like. Younger visitors like live colors and abstract images, while older visitors prefer monochrome looks and realistic pictures. - Humor & Language
Don’t be afraid to laugh – visitors love a sense of humor. It gives confidence about the writer and attracts visitors to come back and read some more. Laughing is a great aspect to getting information across, and it doesn’t have to be text – it can be images, videos, and the likes as well. Also, try keeping language fun and easy to understand – big words are impressive but are also harder to connect to. - Know your audience
While you’re targetting a certain audience, try knowing how to appeal it most – as the fashion section says, younger audiences prefer live colors and abstract images – so don’t try appealing them by doing the opposite!
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