Money Making Websites: 4 Signs Your Design Isn’t Working
Everyone wants their content to be read and appreciated by their intended audience, but here’s the plain truth: you can’t make your visitors happy with your content if the rest of your design turns them off. To truly boost your user experience, and to have a money making website, you’ve got to take the rest of web design into account as well. We’ll walk you through the warning signs of a bad design so you can take precaution and make the necessary changes before it affects your business performance!
Warning Sign #1: Too Many Navigation Options
A proficient navigation will do wonders for your user experience because it helps people to easily find exactly what they want on your website. It sounds simple enough, but implementing just the right amount of tabs/navigation options isn’t as easy as it seems. The best advice we can give is to limit your tabs to about 5-7 main categories, and allow users to hover over the main tabs for more detailed options. If your current navigation bar exceeds eight options, perhaps you should consider reorganizing your content so it can be as efficient and straightforward as possible. Some websites exceed that limit but still pass the test because all of their options essentially fall within one category. For example, a clothing store might have nine or ten navigation options, grouped as Tops, Bottoms, Dresses, Accessories, etc., but these all fall within the category of clothing items. It won’t confuse or disorient the user because it actually helps the user get to where they want to go faster. If your tabs fall within different categories, such as Homepage, About, Blog, Contact, etc., then it should be limited to as few as possible so your visitors won’t be overwhelmed by all the different pages.
Warning Sign #2: Lack of Mobile-Friendliness
It’s no secret that mobile usage is increasing, but did you know that as many as 4 out of 5 Americans use their mobile phones to shop online? This significant statistic should give you a pretty good idea of how beneficial it will be for your website and your users if your design is mobile-friendly and responsive for multiple devices. Even web crawlers favor mobile-friendly/responsive websites. If you optimize your website design for mobile efficiency, there’s no doubt that both your SEO rankings and click-throughs will increase as well. To convince you even further, Google had already announced in 2015 that it was going to use mobile friendliness as a significant ranking factor, and pages will be crawled, indexed, and ranked in real time and on a page-by-page status.
Warning Sign #3: Slow Loading Pages
Another great hindrance to your user experience can be your loading speed. Who has ever liked slow loading pages? This is exactly why search engines tweak their algorithms to favor websites that are fast and efficient. Fast-loading websites naturally boost user experience just by providing information at a timely manner, even if their information is not as up to par as a slower loading web page. This is not to say that you should sacrifice your content for faster loading pages by any means. No matter what, you should always pursue creating valuable content for your visitors. The point we’re trying to make is that your page loading speed plays into that content value as well. If you take away the unnecessary redirects, large image files, and extra plugins, your website can potentially load quicker and rank higher on SERPs. Not to mention, you will earn more repeating visitors because they will know that your website is fast and convenient.
Warning Sign #4: Unintentional Colors, Fonts, and Graphics
Before your webpage design starts putting a dent in your traffic influx, consider your content hierarchy, choice of colors, fonts, and other visuals. The rule of thumb is to create content that’s both universally appealing and convinces the audience to sign up. Websites that try too hard to do the latter often make their websites look spammy and suspicious rather than professional and effective. This all comes down to your organization of ideas and how you choose to direct your visitors’ line of sight using text and visuals. We’ve written an in-depth article before on the psychology of design, which will help you discern which idea to keep and which to toss away. For further guidance, click here to access more design optimization tips.
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