Share what you know with millions of people
Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content
How important is a good looking web site in today's online marketing world?
Should a web site be a static brochure, in other words a tool to educate users about your company/organisation, or should it be a lead generation machine? Or both?
Best Answer
- Recommended by:
- Sandra Gans,
- Rona Empfield
Got to agree with Mohammed and Jack. "Good looking" is a term relative to your audience / end user. Of primary importance is "find-ability" (SEO) and usability. This last element is extremely important and is defined by the users through UX testing - not by what the CEO likes.
Design and layout DO play a huge and critical factor in influencing usability because these elements help visually guide users through your website and a sales conversion process. That being said aesthetics are important in that they reflect your brand value - but not as an end in itself.
Plan into every website development project plenty of A/B testing (especially of landing pages) and study the data on your conversion rates - whether you define "conversion" as completing a sale, filling out a contact form, requesting a download, etc.
Yeah - "tweaking" that was the word I was looking for. Design on the web is fluid - you are right. If you're not testing and tweaking constantly - as a marketer or a designer, you're probably not gutting the most out of your online marketing.
Absolutely Right, Some Companies think Launching a website and adding posts is all what they need to do for successful website, and they spend money on advertising also. but the main thing all needs to see is the nature of visitors.
We need to lean from which page visitor leaving and how much time visitor spending on each page etc..
This will surely help to optimize/tweak website into a real virtual office with a talented Customer Relationship Team :)
Here proper tweaking and study of website visitor will help you to convert website traffic to sales.
- Recommended by:
- Sandra Gans
I believe it to be paramount to the site's success. Let's replace good looking with professional for a moment and add sound usability practices and intuitive information architecture and you have a recipe for comprehensive education and great lead generation with high conversion rates.
- Recommended by:
- Muhammed Jasim
'Good looking' is a relevant term. I've found that most clients want too much, too many colors and place a premium on design rather than functionality. I always try to get my clients to think less, not more. Navigation is way more critical to consumer use than color. What makes for a good consumer experience needs to trump "the look."
- Recommended by:
- Sandra Gans
It's very important to give it a professional look and enhance the usability of the website. It has to be nicely optimized with search engines and there should be enough call to action features. This will allow you to increase traffic and enquiry for your product/services. The main target should be to make your visitors take action.
- Recommended by:
- Beth Cohen-Moore
The key thing we should keep in mind is to design a website which is user friendly, the next thing is to make it convenient and easy for visitors to follow and understand the contents..
Now a days professional websites not having much flash or animation like older days, as it affects the SEO, but slideshows and drop down navigation using java-scripts getting more and more common. So in short i can say, a professional website with good content, minimal animations and it can be in java script (flash takes time to load on visitors using slow internet connection).
Good Looking website means proper font size color and layout. which always make visitors special attention and interest to go through the site. Thus its an important matter that website should be professional and also in easy layout.
The very next thing if we think about marketing is SEO, so optimize content, because having a good looking website with no visitors is waste of money...
- Recommended by:
- Beth Cohen-Moore
Many good points here. Pure and simple it’s all about the experience, site functionality and how the users need for information (content) is fulfilled. The site sponsor is going to have business and marketing objectives they want to accomplish. The site user is looking for information. If the site architecture is confusing and the experience is not intuitive nothing else matters. How good the site looks is also relative to the type of business or organization that is behind the site. If you’re selling a product or service that needs a compelling creative look that’s one reason to have a “good looking” site. If you’re selling medical information it’s most likely about the content and not necessarily about how something looks. Having said that it’s always better to have good design criteria as most sites have lots of competition so making it look better along with a solid user experience (UX) is key.
- Recommended by:
- Muhammed Jasim
Great discussion here.
Sandra makes a great point about the importance of words and the crafting of the offer.
Just one small point of correction. It is not strictly true that Google cannot index Flash content - with some caveats: http://bit.ly/refAE0
- Recommended by:
- Sandra Gans
Tons of great advice on this, but I do want to throw my two cents in.
I am in complete agreement regarding usability and the message, I believe that those are as important, if not more important, than the visual design of the site. But I *strongly* believe that you don't have to break the bank to have all three, and I also believe that having solidly "pro" design speaks volumes, whether consciously or subconsciously, about where your business ranks in your industry. You can have the most efficient site layout on the net, but if your site doesn't use strong typography/imagery/decor and a brand-appropriate palette, no one is likely to guess that you're at the top of your vertical.
The bottom line: it doesn't have to be either/or, and yes, visual design does matter if you want to be seen as a leader.
- Recommended by:
- Richard Beasley
Sandra, Here are a few things I tell my prospective customers that want a creative, colorful, cool, eye-catching site. 1) consider what YOU look for as a consumer when viewing a site; 2) your Home Page needs to get the customer to stay on your site, use some sort of 'call to action'; and 3) take a look at some of the Fortune 100 company web sites. They spend thousands, and some instances over 100,000, to figure out what keeps customers coming back or to capture that viewer. Most of my customers don't have that large of a budget, so just collecting ideas from the 'big boys' can be very beneficial.
- Recommended by:
- Steve Arnold
“Clothes and manners do not make the man; but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ward_Beecher " Abraham Lincoln (who said of Beecher that no one in history had "so productive a mind") was in the audience at one point, and Walt Whitman visited him." Best! Shakti Saran
- Recommended by:
- Gabe Mitchell
A well designed and carefully worded website is extremely important. No matter where anyone finds you, on a social network, picking up a business card, clicking on an ad, all roads lead to your website.
These days though that website shouldn't be some slick brochureware site that is full of static content. It needs to have life and interactivity so users want to click the contact link.
On the other hand too many bells and whistles will chase a user off too.
something cleanly designed with great information, and ways for the user to reach out and connect with you and your team is what makes a good website.
- Recommended by:
- Gabe Mitchell
Creative? Not really an absolute necessity. Seeing what the shopper expects and respects, yes. As others have said, built to the expectations of your market.
Thank you everyone for the great answers, and great discussion! I shall be following you all on Focus/Twitter etc to continue to read your eloquent and savvy responses. have a great day y'all :)
As the terrific Billy Crystal character, Fernando, used to say on SNL, "Remember dahling, it's not how good you feel, it's how good you look. And you look mahvelous!"
A web site shows who you and your business are, how you view the world and your marketplace, and how you wish to be perceived. So a good looking web site is a big deal!
The company I work for is currently in the throes of redesigning its website and therefore this discussion is particularly relevant!
I agree with the 'striking the balance' argument. At the end of the day, content is king but also delivery of that content is key as it speak volumes about the host company's approach to business in general.
A website full of information that is delivered poorly i.e. difficult to dissect and digest the required points, suggests a business that is not in tune with its audience and will not be able to deliver services or products in a manner that is conducive to harmonious working relationships.
On the flip-side, a website that is too light on content can suggest there is little behind it and may not convince the audience that the host business is qualified to assist them or deliver.
Added to this is the means of getting the audience to the website in the first place. Now, THIS is a topic that only those who have danced with the SEO devil seem to be able to master as the goalposts keep moving.
If anyone out there knows of at least some basic rules that one must ensure are adhered to in repsect to keywords etc. then please do share!
WHO is your audience? Electrical Engineering Students or Journalists then make it cute and social; If you are selling to Senior Engineering Managers then right to the technical stuff; If you are selling to the Executive Officers of the Engineering company then make it look like a Powerpoint presentation. Your third paragraph sounds like Intel's website and they seem to do OK.
You are right Stephen. Make it simple and effective for your users, bottom-line. As important as aesthetics is, don't let it get in the way of simplicity and effectiveness.
Good question Sandra!
Hey Sandra - interesting question and some great replies. My own website has a blog embedded in it and today I published some (hopefully useful) stats on views, comments, sources. I'm not great with data so I've tried to present it as a story, seems to have gone down well and if you don't mind I'll share the link here for you and others if you're interested?
http://stopdoingdumbthingstocustomers.com/communication/a-numbers-game-sort-of/
Personally I think I've really benefited from the blog as that keeps the site fresh. And as you'll see from the article - people visit other pages while they are there, I'm confident the web site gets much more traffic as a result of being integrated with the blog. And I'm with James - I don't get all this SEO stuff!
Cheers - Doug
Check out http://webpagesthatsuck.com/ , it has great positive and negative examples.
Most importantly make sure that web site appeals to your customers NOT to the executives that sign off on it, i.e don't suck up to your boss. And when testing the web site make sure it works for your customer not the dweeb inside of your network firewall who wrote it with admin permissions.
You may initially attract the customer from a link however if the site loads too slow or a button doesn't work on the site, that customer is gone and won't come back.
It matters a lot, a great deal lot in the event if the website represents your business, organization, institution etc.
A poorly designed website my turn off the people who have not known your business and have approached you online to know more about you.
The importance increase manifold if your website is approached via search engines on certain keywords. Experts believe that people take less than 4 seconds to decide to stay or move on.........
Events
- Dos and Don'ts of Small Business Marketing May 29 @ 11 am PT
- Lead Nurturing 202: The Next Generation May 31 @ 11 am PT
- The Tricks to Paid Media June 6 @ 11 am PT
- Display Advertising for Brand Awareness June 20 @ 11 am PT
Related Activity
Hi Sandra,
Your website is the centerpiece of your marketing efforts, as likely most (if not all) of your marketing activities are driving traffic there. So a look and feel consistent with your overall company brand is important. But few visitors to a website have taken the lead conversion action you wanted them to take, or made a purchase, because of a "good looking" website. Visitors to a website take action because of your specific offer -- expressed in copy. So words and offers are the key. Flash and Java or other design elements do not convince visitors to buy or request your white paper.
However, websites stopped being designed as "brochureware" at least 10 years ago. Effective websites should be written TO your audience, in a friendly, conversational tone. Brochures, as far as I've seen, have never sold anything by themselves. Every website needs to be educational -- that's why you drive traffic to your site to have prospects "learn more." But educational does not mean dry copy -- educational that presents solutions to my problems can be (and must be) engaging.
Every website (like every marketing element in your plan) should start with objectives. If one of your website's objectives is lead generation, then you take the educational but engaging copy and add interesting offers to drive those leads.
Lead generation cannot be done without education. And education without lead generation is a major lost opportunity. Effective lead generation offers ensure you maximize the value from every website visitor, and give you leads you can "educate over time" with your engaging email conversion series of messages.
Effective websites should feature engaging copy and intriguing offers that achieve your objectives, with a design that enhances your brand. Start with objectives. Create your offers, and copy that really sells and answers your prospect's questions. Add a brand-appropriate design.
(As a note to other comments above, remember that Google cannot read Flash or Java. So if you're going to use either, especially for menus, you'll need to give the Googlebot another way to navigate your site.)