Tips

The Success of a Good Website is Rarely Accidental.

Here are some tips that will go a long way to making your website not only efficient but a pleasure to visit ……not once, but repeatedly.

Entertaining?
There are many people advocating that websites should be eye-catching and entertaining to the browser. It must have audio and the latest video or animated graphics to hold the interest of the viewer. I want to know what planet are these people from? If your business is in the entertainment industry, yes I can accept that you’d benefit from all of that, but if you’re not in that industry then you may prefer to promote your products or services rather than provide entertainment.

Introductions.
A very common failing with a lot of websites is their flashy introductions. No doubt it’s happened  to you too, you’re looking for that foo foo valve again, so you click onto a website that you know sells them and you wait…..and wait….and yes, you wait some more whilst it’s loading up some animated illustration or video that is supposed to amaze and entertain you, and all this time it’s building up frustration in you because all that you want to find out is whether they stock a foo foo valve! A quote from a news article on 'Future Now' stated "In a recent A/B test with a client, we were able to reduce the homepage abandonment by 28.57% by substituting a flash element, with a static image. This change reduced load and wait time, it listed product benefits immediately, and we didn’t have to hope people would be patient enough to see the right part of the Flash animation. It also helped boost sales, since before the test so many people left before they got past the home page."

 10 seconds...I'm outa here!
Research has shown that most browsers (including me) that cannot access a website within 10 seconds move onto the next site that does give them quick access. We’re an impatient lot aren’t we? But that is a reality that is very frequently overlooked in the excitement of creating a website and wanting to make a big impression. Often a lot of time and money is spent on a splashy home page without too much thought given to what’s inside the business end of your site. If your site is slow to download, your bounce rate will go through the roof (bounce rate is when a browser lands on a website and exits almost immediately). Often flashy video introductions take a long time to download and can cause gnashing of teeth and much angst to the browser who simply clicks on the back arrow and looks elsewhere.

Another thought for you: Usually when you search for that foo foo valve on Google, it actually by-passes the  home page and the search engine takes you directly to the page that the foo foo valve is on, so all of that fancy expensive gimmickry on the home page was a waste of money anyway.

Appeal
Of course your website should have appeal and individuality, but it should have functionality as well ! A website should be easy to read and navigate. It should have consistency throughout and provide the information that the browser is searching for.

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