How Pretty Web Design Can Distract You From Effective Marketing
Good-looking websites don’t do much for you by themselves. You can spend thousands on a website and not get much bang for your buck.
Scary, right?
Great design is helpful to increase the value and trust your brand has, but what’s even more important is that you have an effective website.
What does that mean?
Your website should help you to accomplish your goals.
That could be…
- Making sales
- Email newsletter sign ups
- Accepting donations
- People getting your phone number and calling
…or any number of other options.
Whatever your goal is, keep it in mind and don’t lose sight of it.
When getting a new website designed, it can be easy to get lost in the details of what should go where, what looks best, and what’s most pleasing to your eye.
But if it’s not all in service of your goal, it just doesn’t matter.
It could, in fact, distract you from your goal.
And I’m guessing that your goal isn’t to have people stop and admire the design of your website as if it were a painting in a gallery.
Big flashy graphics, complex branding, and erroneous info could increase load times (which decreases visits & sales), distract visitors, or confuse people.
Here are a couple tips to keep in mind that will help guide people toward your goal:
Be Clear About The Value You Provide
Your design will make you appear more valuable, but use it in conjunction with good copywriting and user-friendly design.
A visitor should immediately know what your website is about and what they can get from it.
Make Your Website Easy To Use
If people don’t know where to click to find the info they need, they won’t stay on it for long. Use constant navigation and branding, make it clear what is the next step people should take.
When your goal is sales, make it easy to buy from you: have an easy to navigate products/store section. And if you’re looking for donations, you can take a hint from Kickstarter: every project has an immediately visible large donate button.
Build Your Email List
If people visit your site and rarely come back, you’re losing out on lots of leads and the relationship you could be building with them. Use an email service provider to create your email list and add sign up forms to your site.
Create Content Consistently
Creating blog, podcast, or video content is a great way to get people coming back to your site. You’ll be seen as a valuable resource and give people more reason to sign up for your email list.
Whether it’s changing the way people eat, how they exercise, or their financial plans, creating a website that’s an effective marketing machine will do better than any site that sits like a painting on your wall… pretty to look at but not doing anything for you or your customers.
The ideal is to marry great aesthetic design with user-friendliness and effective marketing. But if you’re going to skimp on one, leave out the pretty designs and add them in when it makes sense.
I’ve seen hundreds of extremely successful business sites that aren’t particularly flashy… but they have the marketing part down to a science. That’s why they succeed.
What elements of your existing website are you planning on changing to make more effective Leave a comment below.