Oct
20
2016
Businesses should be slightly paranoid about their website. Well designed websites communicate quality, authority, and authenticity. Poor websites are the equivalent of having a dirty store. Here are the 4 goals every website should strive to do well - those that do will thrive.
1 - Alaska Web Design Built Around Ideal Customer
Not all websites are designed equally. Nor should they be. Some website should be developed to be interesting. Others to be chic and sexy. Others to be beautiful or extremely interactive. Clients will often come to me with a specific idea in mind about how they want their Alaskan website to be designed, and I have to explain that websites should be developed NOT with a specific design in mind, but with a specific type of user .
A specific type of user is your business's “ideal” user. The reason is because different demographics use websites differently and require different information. To decide if the current design of your website is right, you first need to know your customer demographics, and ask yourself a few questions.
- What is the style of my images (fun, interesting, healthy, stylish, etc.)?
- What is the mood of my writing (informative/detailed, upbeat, authoritative)?
- What is the layout of my website (navigational, full screen, sectional)?
Designing a website without having a very firm idea of what type of person you are developing your website for is like showing up to a trekking trip with flipflops. If you can summarize in a couple of sentences what type of person(s) your website is developed for, then you're off to a good start.
2 - Should always pass the blink test
A critical part of any web design is that it build to give customers information quickly. Enter the blink test, which tests whether or not your users can orient themselves on your website (i.e., where things are, and what things do) before they blink. This is one of the primary goals of Alaska web design.
If they can pass the blink test, your website is well-designed in terms of the placement of items (navigation bar, links, etc.), layout, and functionality. The blink test equates to about 5 seconds. Try it yourself on your own website or popular websites. What do you find?
3 - Alaskan websites should be genuine
One question: does your website have stock images? Even high quality stock images always look, well, like stock images. They are not authentic, and it always shows.
As a photographer, stock images creeps me out. Stock images will kill Alaska web design. They stick out like a sore thumb. They don’t say anything about what your business is about. They don’t demonstrate your business’s style. They communicate nothing. And as beautiful as Windows and Mac background images are, they don’t belong on your website.
Professional, creative photography is very affordable, and can make or break a website - especially in Alaska that is ripe with so many quality photo opportunities, natural images they are definitely essential pieces of Alaskan web design. The important goal here is that YOUR images are customized for YOUR website. If your images are *real*, and high quality, then you have the right stuff.
4 - Shouldn’t look like a Wikipedia page
Do you like Wikipedia? I sure do. “Wiki-journeys” (an hour of clinking one link to the next) are great. But heavy text is an extremely poor choice for just about any other website. The best websites are desigend to communicate almost all information with:
- Pictures: people retain 65% more information when information is coupled with an image;
- Videos: users spend an average of over 2 minutes more on websites with videos;
- Infographics: 80% of people are more wiling to read information if it is displayed with color.
Because of this, web design should have two goals: that they are understood and digested visually, and has web writing that is short, sweet, and to the point.