Most web developers have met potential clients who want their new website to be completely unique and stand out from its competitors. They might say things like: “Move the menu bar”. “Encourage visitors to take different steps to reach their destination”. “Reinvent the website experience completely”.
The truth is that new and unique web experiences are seldom a success. We are so used to scrolling nowadays and our brain is tuned in to seeing website elements in the same place. Also, as website visitors, we are inpatient; if we can’t find what we are looking for in the ‘usual’ spot, then we’ll probably just move on.
Today, we look for the home page button in a particular place, we know where the navigation bar should be and where the ‘contact us’ button is likely to be found. If you decide to reinvent the wheel at this point, then you’ll probably lose potential customers who don’t have the time to negotiate your reimagined idea of how a website should function.
There are many analogies we can use to explain this – including books and cars. Books can look very different, but typically they have a front cover and you know where to find the contents page or the index. If you want to read about the author, that’s usually on the inside front cover. When it comes to a car, we know where the steering wheel will be and where the indicators can be found etc. Why start from scratch when something works?
A study by a group of universities in the US (Harvard, Maryland and Colorado) looked at website design. Interestingly, no specific design guidelines emerged from this study – apart from the fact that more visually complex or busy websites have less appeal to visitors. Basically, they are confusing for our brains and there’s too much information to process. So, as with most things in life, less is more.
Today, web design also comes down to what Google is looking for. One commentator described the process as a ‘talent show’. You could be the best singer, dancer or comedian but, if Google likes tap dancing, you’re going to tap dance! To satisfy Google, it has to ‘recognise’ the elements on your website and this means you’ll need to adhere to some ‘traditional’ website structures.
To achieve something Google recognises, the website structure has to follow various ‘rules’, including an H1 tag which outlines the topic of the page and this should appear on every page. You need to make your layout clear and easy to navigate.
A simple and clear website is also preferable if you want your site to be accessible. There is a set of guidelines for making websites accessible known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and these are based on four design principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust.
By focusing on principles, not technology, they emphasise the need to think about the different ways that people interact with content. For example, users might use a keyboard instead of a mouse, use a screen magnifier to enlarge part or all of a screen or rely on a screen reader to ‘read’ (speak) content out loud.
Typically, if a screen reader is faced with a web design which is super creative or too image-heavy for instance, it can make this process much less straightforward. Also, anyone using a screen reader will also appreciate you not inserting too many headings, images or tables etc on a page.
Read more about accessible websites in one our previous blogs.
There are situations though when you could go more ‘out there’ with design and that’s when you are creating landing pages, perhaps for a specific campaign or a standalone event. Unlike a standard page on your website, landing pages provide an opportunity to play with more challenging designs, colours and even messaging that might not fit the rest of your brand.
You can find out more about landing pages in a previous blog.
A landing page is a standalone web page, which is usually created for a specific marketing campaign. To get there, somebody would typically have clicked through via an email or a link in social media, for instance. They are pages which can only be accessed via that particular link and can’t be found by somebody who is simply scrolling through the website.
Landing pages, which are usually only around for a limited period of time, are built around that particular customer’s needs or desires. The marketing team will have already sorted them into potential customers with particular interests or those which have a certain profile. It could be that you decide to target one age group or somebody has clicked through, having indicated an interest in a product or service.
It will be targeted and there will be a very specific outcome. Used properly, they should offer higher conversion rates as compared with the regular pages on your website.
If the landing page isn’t going to be around for that long, then you probably aren’t as worried about its Google rankings. This is then an opportunity to be more creative and challenge visitors with what they usually expect from a web page. If they’ve arrived on this landing page via a link, perhaps you need visitors to complete a task to enter a competition, for example.
If you’d like to talk further about website design, call us at Lake Solutions on: 020 3397 3222.