Beauty is in the eye of the beholder it is said. But when it comes to website design there are really two beaus that you are trying to woo: the reader and the search engines. The reader, or more precisely your growing audience, is vital because without readership your website will wither and die. But it goes without saying that precious few will find your website in the first place if you can't achieve some kind of presence on page one of the major search engines. It's this schizophrenic existence of trying to please two masters that many times makes a hash of an otherwise stellar website. So the question becomes one of, "Can you have your online cake and eat it too?"
The Good Website
The very essence of a good website is engagement. In other words, does your site have something to say? And if it does, how does it speak to your audience. The most effective sites nowadays don't rely on mere prose to capture the audience's attention. They employ a multimedia approach that combines such things as audio podcasts and videos along with the written word. While pictures are worth a thousand words, the best sites don't waste a lot of space on images. When they do post a picture, it isn't going to be some nebulous stock photo that means little or nothing to the audience. The best images are photos of the business and the people behind the scenes.
Another precept of the "Good Website" is that it isn't one long advertisement. People today are continually bombarded by ads everywhere they go. If you hope to do business with those who do happen upon your website, then you need to do much more than merely pitch everyone who lands on your homepage. People love to be entertained and they hate to be preached at. Therefore if you want to make the best impression, you need to accomplish two simple tasks with your site:
1. You need to prove to your audience that you are trustworthy.
2. You need to get your audience to like you.
That's why blogs and social networks were created, to engage, inform and entertain. Instead of using these media to shower the audience with ad copy, what the most effective sites do is create an ongoing steam of anecdotes, time and money saving tips and true-life stories that convey something of value to anyone who comes to your site. Since the bulk of your site doesn't change from one week to the next, it's your blogs and social posts that will give your audience a reason to come back to your site again and again, all of which brings them ever closer to doing business with you. These elements are also of interest to the search engine spiders, which rate relevancy and frequency of bot blogposts and social posts.
Life is the Best Reality Show
Another way to get an audience's attention is to show them what you're all about. With the advent of podcasts and video, this couldn't be easier. Today it is a snap to create audio and videocasts that are five times as compelling as the written word. Face it, people prefer being shown to being told. When you consider that everything from laptops to tablet pcs to smartphones are virtual TV broadcast stations, there is really no excuse for not availing yourself of these devices to reach out to the masses.
Here's a video of our weekly online radio show
Then once you have their attention, affection and trust, you need to meet the prospects halfway. This translates into giving the audience a reason and a means to do business with you. Just like the ads that many businesses run on door hangars and in newsprint, online you still need to make the prospect an offer they can't refuse. This has to be something of real or at least perceived value that will entice the prospect into either making an initial purchase or registering. Without an acceptable offer, your chances of scoring a conversion are next to nil.
You also need to make it easy for someone to take you up on your offer. This means having your phone number highly visible above the fold. If they have to hunt for a way to contact you they are going to do business elsewhere. It doesn't hurt to also include an autoresponder that allows people to register for your offer via email. The bottom line is that if you make it easy to do business with you, then you will do more business. So designing a website that engages the audience really isn't all that difficult if you make the most of the available technology. The problem is that somewhere during the past few years a number of people, including professional website designers have lost their way.
The Bad Website
I know that there are 130,000 websites coming online every day, but do so many of them have to act like it's 1999? Back then there was no such thing as blogs or social networks. Video was out of the question due to the fact that bandwidth was nearly nonexistent. Most websites back then were what I like to refer to as e-brochures, which were in essence an online version of most company's printed literature. As a result their engagement power was limited to verbiage interspersed with a few images. The problem is that more than two thirds of the sites that pop up day in and day out still seem to emulate this look. Or, they are one gigantic image with dancing flash banners that are not only annoying to look at, but that the search engines can't see at all. So what these sites do is waste space since nobody with the exception of the website owner and a few family members will ever see them.
The Ugly Website
This toad of a website usually comes about due to the fact that the website owner is more concerned with generating high ranking than in communicating with prospective customers. As a result the site is so stuffed with keywords that it is nearly incomprehensible to all but the search engine spiders. This leads to high ranking coupled with abysmally low conversion rates. It boils down to winning the battle and losing the war. You've seen these sites all too often. They're the ones that runs about five feet below the fold and are chock full of adspeak and bullet points and boxes full of questionable testimonials. The worst thing is that if the site's owners had taken a little more time to create content that was compelling to the reader, rather than concentrating on carpet bombing them with ad copy, then they would have achieved both high ranking and exceptional conversion rates.
Creating the Right Balance
When it comes to creating sites that speak to the audience and please the search engines, the most important thing to remember is that content is king. If you strive to deliver timely, interesting content then your website will be an asset to prospects and search engines alike.
Carl Weiss is president of W Squared Media Group, an online marketing firm that embraces and employs all forms of dynamic content. He also owns and operates Jacksonville Video Production and is co-host of Working the Web to Win, a weekly radio show that airs at 4pm Eastern every Tuesday on BlogTalkRadio.com
There are way too many ugly websites out there. With all the technology that's right at your fingertips, there is no excuse for a poorly crafted site.
ReplyDelete