In order to avoid clients becoming overwhelmed with too many graphics and too much content, it is paramount to the success of your website to have a fine balance between web content and website design.
Too much of one will annoy the users and alternatively too much of the other will just be boring.
The fine line that must be walked should be handled by a web company Sydney that is experienced in this field and has many sites under its belt.
Obviously, the home page or the landing page is the most crucial part of the site and needs to have the most attention focused on, but this careful attention should also be carried throughout the balance of the sites internal pages. Failure to adhere to these strict design and content guidelines will only result in users making a mad dash to exit the site and perhaps look elsewhere for your service or product offering.
Balancing Website Design Elements
Internet-savvy users are generally online ( if they are not looking at educational sites), are really searching for a good or service which they can buy. If the website hinders this process, either through; large graphics ( which take forever to download) or small hard to read the text then they are not likely to hang around the site.
People are really fussy and are over the internet noise online, so if you cannot satisfy their requirements fairly quickly then you can kiss them goodbye.
Avoiding this type of issue is not that hard and if you do engage the services of a web design studio like Hopping Mad Design, issues like this will be mitigated early on in the piece and completely avoided altogether. Our web designers have the necessary design skills and web copywriting experience, to keep potential users on your site and keep their interest maintained whilst they are within the subpages. Called conversion rates, it’s a critical element of the design process as you want to eliminate as many of the buying hurdles that buyers face on some sites.
Important Search Engine Facts
Having a website that loads quickly will help with your online rankings. Having a web page that is overstuffed with large text and graphics will hinder the ranking process. Your competitors might have sleeker, faster sites that load much more efficiently, meaning a better user experience and therefore a much higher ranking.
Well written content married with clever design, plus correct site-wide semantics will also aid the search engine spiders in their indexing. If for example, there is a page on your site about a particular service offering, the content and graphics must gel nicely to maintain readers and SEO. Ask your potential web company if they can show you an example of how they have managed to get a site ranked with the combination of web content, whilst at the same time not boring the pants off someone.
Correct page style sheets are the best for your site in the eyes of the engines. Keyword stuffing with many phrases that relate to your business dotted throughout your site will not be looked upon favourably, plus your site will end up looking odd and not very appealing for the user.
Over Use Of Flashy Graphics With Minimal Text
This is a favourite amongst architectural and design companies, that have large moving images on their homepage, looking to highlight their portfolio of work only. These images are generally hero shots and on some sites, there can be many images. In some cases, the content is very minimal and the text is absolutely tiny. For some businesses with an extremely high profile and very well established client base, this may be fine, but those looking to get into the market and get new clients on board need to have not only strong visual text and graphics throughout the site but will also need well-articulated content on each page.
Without this potential customers are not going to know enough about the firm and its services and will not likely contract them. Copy is now just as important as graphics and should be considered a vital and important part of the marketing mix. Utilising the services of a website design studio that has an in house content team is an added bonus.
Ask your web team if they have someone internally and if not, see if they are able to outsource this to a credible copy person. One point to note of interest is that Google does not read flash animation and it is, therefore, inadvisable to implement any flash graphics on a website.
Avoid The Temptation of Too Wordy Pages
There is the temptation by some design studios to cram as much content on a page as possible. The rationale for this is twofold. Firstly that a wordy, text-heavy page will rank in the search engines and secondly, giving the user as much information as possible for fear of missing out on something. Both philosophies are bad and will result in users deserting your site in droves.
The best way to tackle this is to have anywhere between 1000 – 2000 words per page, with images that are related to the topic. Most business owners I know will struggle with the concept of writing this many words and this is why a copywriter is an essential ingredient for the web project. Images relating to your topic should be relatively easy to find online through the many photo libraries available.
Simplicity is the Key To a Well Designed Page
Keep it simple and straight to the point. Make sure that the design interface is very intuitive, easy to use and all navigation points are easily identifiable. Ensure that all content fits in nicely with the photos and that images are appropriate for the text. If you are going through an image library, try to get royalty-free images to save on the costs. As an example, if you are looking at images for a law firm, it’s best to look for photos with a more conservatively edge. These are abundant online and choosing a suitable image should be easy for your web designer. Content that works well with that image is the job of the copywriter and if this is facilitated correctly, the end result will be a site that people understand, relate to and therefore will stay on.