Communication in Your Web Design
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Continued from previous post Website Design & Being a Trusted Expert
While ‘content’ usually refers to the written part of your communications, it really includes all the visual elements, as pictures also communicate to your users. So really…
‘content’ is anything and everything that the user sees that will affect how they perceive you!
And web design is more important than you think; users make judgments about the authority and credibility of websites based on their design.
You could have the most informative, authoritative written content in the world, but if your site looks like it was designed by a 12 year old with ADD (or even worse, a 60 year old with no web experience) the user will reject your site.
Web design also goes beyond the look and feel of the site to its usability. This is something that a lot of advertising agencies were forgetting about for a while: they were designing these beautiful, meaningful, and significant websites that won a lot of creative awards, but were absolutely horrible to try and navigate or get any kind of useful information out there. This was the most self-indulgent import from the world of traditional advertising – the habit of creating advertising for people in the advertising world, not to accomplish the goals of the business.
In traditional advertising, it was hard to say that a campaign hadn’t worked when it had gotten so much good press (which, first clue, was about the ads and not the products) but in this online world, where everything is measurable, it became obvious quite quickly that advertising for advertising’s sake wouldn’t cut it. (That’s not to say that it doesn’t still happen, but you’re too smart and now well-informed to let that happen to you, right?) Truly remarkable sites are beautiful and easy to use.
Unfortunately, those beautiful and easy-to-use sites are few and far between. But there are a lot of small changes that you can make to improve both the look and the functionality of your site. Above all, you can’t underestimate the importance of your usability; your decision process about the design choices you make should be subject to the same amount of scrutiny of your other business decisions.
Remember, whether or not a user completes a transaction on your website depends heavily on the experience and usability of your web design. If you haven’t prioritized your resources to include some time spent on your web design and how it communicates to your targets, it can have an adverse affect on your sales.
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can i link this in my company blog? we do web design and i would be more than happy to link out to your artciel/site
Please do
Indeed, content is the king but design also has an important role to play.. most of the webmasters make their websites user friendly though a few of them focus on the design.. In my opinion a designer should have a brainstorming session before designing a site and must be very creative..
Hey John,
nicely said. It is because of this very reason I have removed all the banners and useless elements from my sidebar leaving only a subscription box and topic overview.
Igor
you have proved that content is just not writing but every thing that conveys an idea. surely great post.
[...] Your Communications Written by John Cow on July 14th, 2009 // In the previous post “Communication In Your Web Design” I talked about how your web design can actually communicate to your visitors as to whether [...]
One of the things I like when visiting a site is videos. If I get bored I can multitask while listening to the video, then go back and “rewind” if I hear something interesting.
If I were just scanning there are sites I’d have left much sooner
Rick
Would have been nice to see some samples…. links, but pics would have been fine too.
Interesting post so