Throughout the vast crevices and nooks of the Internet, you’re bound to have run into blogs or other articles explaining how to make you website better. You need SEO, and you need responsive design, and you need HTML5—you need this, that, and the other, which is all fine and good. But what are the things your site is (or might be) currently doing that needs to stop? Yesterday?
We’ve rounded up some of the top grievances we run into with our own clients, and we’re hoping to give you advice on how to make your website better by stopping. Think addition by subtraction.
Using Gimmicks That Clutter Your Site
There are so many businesses and business owners that think their websites need every latest bell and whistle available on the market. The problem is, they don't. In fact, most websites don't need half of the elements they're currently utilizing, because at the end of the day, if they aren't bringing value, they aren't worthwhile to your cause. Not everyone needs a scrolling photo wall, just like not everyone needs a poorly designed search function. Your website needs a purpose, and I promise you that purpose isn't to bombard your audience with useless features. That's what Samsung is for.
Excessive Use of Terrible Stock People
Now, we'll be the first to admit—we use stock images all the time, and are well versed in weeding through the overpopularized ones. However, stock people are always a big NO. So stop using them. Your audience is more savvy than you think, and they'll know the difference between real employees and really bad models, especially if they don't match the tone of your site. And while your team might not have that robotic smile you're aiming for, it's a far better way to connect with your audience, as human beings. You'll always have thousands of professional teams smiling to use as a backup, so until then: stop it.
Video Ads That Play Automatically
I like to play a game whenever I'm browsing the internet. Here are the rules: When a video ad automatically starts playing while you're reading or viewing something, close out of it and never use that product or site ever again. Overkill? Maybe. But man is that a great way to un-engage me. I'm not going to return to a site where I have to fight to see the reason I was led there in the first place! If someones interested in the ad, they'll click it. All too often, these ads are nothing more than click fodder, as the quality of conversions is lower when you try to close a sale before the sale has even started, so maybe they aren't the best for your website. Moral of the story: knock it off.
Banner Ads That Fill The Entire Screen When Your Mouse Barely Grazes the Corner of the Stupid Ad
These guys have a special place in my heart. Similar to the automatic video ad, these ads whose click-rarity borders on assinine are the bane of my (and many others) existance. With the slightest movement, these drop downs take over the entire page's real estate, hiding the content you came for and throwing something else in its place, like the latest action film you'll never see, or car insurance. If you're goal is to build your website's audience, throwing one of these up is like shooing them away. So stop shooing them away.
Posting Overly-Promotional Material No One But Your Employees Pretend To Care About
This one varies from business to business, as different companies have different challenges to overcome, content-wise. However, the difficulty of content creation is no excuse for lazy or self-serving content that's of no use to anyone—including your website. Quit reading blog articles that are telling you you need to tweet 60 times a day, and publish a Facebook post every twenty minutes. Start with quality, useful information and as your audience and their ineterests grow, so too will your content. No one came to your site to hear how great you were, especially if you wrote it yourself. Customers want reality, not fiction. Stick with the former.
Publish Novellas In Place Of Content On Your Website
No one wants to read your book, and stuffing your page with content doesn't make you a smarter source of information. Viewers want to skim the text for the important aspects, and too many writers try to go above and beyond because they think we WANT more content. While partly true, that content we want is quality. It isn't full of fluff on over-arching statements that don't provide value, it's real value-add information that answers your actual questions, while educating for the future—and it can be done in less than 300 words. If the section "requires" an excess of content, it's best to break it up into easy-to-manage blocks of information. We're not asking much...
In the end, sometimes stopping is a better solution than trying to replace the mistake. Always remember why your audience is coming to your site, and work backwards to provide them with the best tools to navigate your site, without scaring them away.
