Thursday, July 17, 2014

Web Design TIp: Reduce the Distractions

We have talked about the navigation of a site when doing web design and how important good navigation is. One thing that plays into the navigation of your site are the distractions on your site.

The navigation of your site is like a set of roads in a town; if you have a town that used streets that were terrible quality, they didn't lead you to where you thought they would/should, you had no idea where to turn next, you would leave the town (or just be really PO'd the whole time). Why would you want the same for your website? The worst thing you can do to a web visitor is make them wonder where they should go next because they're lost. A lost visitor = an angry visitor; an angry visitor = a visitor who won't come back… that's what I've learned as a Chicago web designer.

There are a couple things that come to be very distracting when on a website:

  • When you have way too many calls to action. Not everything has to say "Do this!" "Get that!" Etc. Some things are allowed to be informational. Like driving down a road and every establishment says, "Come on in!" Eventually, you just ignore them. 
  • Too many links. You want to have links between pages for easy navigation and SEO but you don't want to have 5 links on one page pointing to the same page. Still driving down that road and you come to an intersection but every road leads to the same place. No one likes redundancy. 
So what can you do? Put your "super important" pages at the main navigation bar that is at the top of your website. The less important pages should be accessible on the side or the bottom of the page. 

Looking for an experienced web designer who knows how to make a website that will get you noticed? Talk with Integraphix