Tag Archives: content

The Credibility Test

Posted on July 2, 2010 by in Website Design

My clients regularly hear me harping on about credibility. There are so many websites out there these days people don’t spend a lot of time on your site – if you think they are going to sit there for a few minutes reading your long winded buzz-word filled marketing fluff intro you can think again! What they are more likely to do is spend a matter of seconds on your homepage and form an instance opinion of whether you are suitable for them to do business with.

Think about this every time you are using the web looking for products or services. You are looking for a new school for your kids, working out where to go to dinner, looking for a place to go on holiday – anything. You make immediate assumptions about the credibility of the business based on the homepage. If the design is crappy, you assume (probably rightly) that every other aspect of their business is of the same standard. If the information is sloppy, if the graphics don’t load, if it looks out-dated, if links are broken etc you assume this is a reflection of the business – and it probably is.

People who make a living selling products on Ebay know this. They know that using services like Auctiva to pretty up their pages, putting in nice galleries, showing their other items, showing their feedback from happy customers all contribute to building their credibility. In fact they know that once their feedback rating gets to 100, people will be far more likely to buy from them.

This concept applies to every business and every website on the web and it relates not only design but to content. Here are some examples from some of our clients that are doing this well.

Us! – Although we could get better at it, we use our homepage to showcase our latest projects, keep regular up to date news to show we are interested and we know our stuff, have logos of our bigger name clients etc. We’ve got testimonials from clients and a lot of good quality content (we hope). We mention the years we have been in business and the hundreds of sites we have built (if they happen to read the welcome statement). Hopefully people who visit our site who are thinking about building a new site will be able to tell that we are the real deal. If we ever win an award I’ll be sure to put that on there!

Business Plans – use their TV appearance video, testimonial slider and a clean professional design to build credibility and its super easy for people to contact them or to purchase a product.

Birdies Garden Products – see the Aus made logo, the award, the tv video, Bunnings mentioned, the images showing the product actually working! It’s all good!

Every industry is different and you will know what people in your industry like to see. But in general they will want to see a nice professional design and some evidence (ideally 3rd party evidence) that you are a good quality credible business.

Leave a comment or share • Continue Reading →

Tips for writing content for websites

Posted on September 29, 2009 by in Getting started

Writing for the web is completely different to writing for print. Studies have shown that people read about 20-40% slower on screen. In addition, studies have found that users don’t read at all in most cases – they skim, until they find the information they are after. Content should be:

Concise Use the least amount of words possible to get the point across.

Scannable Structure the text so that visitors can easily skim the information to find what they are after (bullet points, lots of white space, clear headings etc)

Other tips include the following.

  • Simply think about what the viewer is seeking out of the page and put that text on the page – scrutinise every paragraph and remove those that aren’t necessary.
  • Put the most important messages up the top.
  • Include diagrams or other graphics to break up text.
  • Use short paragraphs rather than long paragraphs.
  • Use bullet points or other methods (such as bold) to break up text – but do not overuse.
  • If it is lots of text (say more than a page) consider including it in a separate document (such as a PDF tip sheet etc) or breaking it up into separate pages.

The website should provide visitors with easy access to the things they are after, which are typically:

  • who you are,
  • what you do,
  • what you’ll find on the site,
  • how to contact you.

If search engine results are important to you, it is also important to consider how your text will be picked up by the search engines.

Consider the following tips for optimising page text for search engine performance:

  • Determine an appropriate keyword phrase for your business (contact us to help you determine this phrase)
  • Include your keywords and keyword phrases in your sitename – this will mean it is included in every title
  • Bold keywords and keyword phrases in website copy
  • Mention keywords and keyword phrases in welcome message and throughout site as much as possible (without sounding obvious)
  • Place main keywords at beginning and end of pages
Leave a comment or share • Continue Reading →

Characteristics of a bad website

Posted on May 6, 2008 by in Getting started, Website Design

If you are interested in having a visitor return to your site and ultimately make contact with you regarding your services, you need a well planned, logically structured and professionally designed website.

While we aren’t all web design experts, most people can look at a site and make a decision on whether the site meets this criteria and therefore reflects a professional company.

The indicators below are indicators of a poor website. If your website has these features, contact us today, you might be losing valuable business!

Excessive use of Frames

Some indicators of a site that uses frames are multiple scrollbars on the screen and parts of the site not refreshing when you navigate to a
new page (although this could be other things). In early web design frames were very popular however these days websites using frames are the minority and are generally avoided in modern web design. In general they should be avoided – they look unprofessional and they are not friendly for the search engines.

Colour Scheme

Colour plays an important factor in the design of any marketing material including websites. Colouring on your website needs to be pleasing to the eye of the visitor, not plastered with your favourite colour combination which just happens to be your favourite footy teams colours!

Bad websites have some pages that stand out because they use random bright colours – like a rainbow throughout the site. They use fluorescent colours, which do nothing to keep a visitor navigating through their site. Or they have many different colours. Dark backgrounds are also popular in badly designed websites. Colours should reflect the business branding and should be limited to only a few. If the business branding colours are not chosen well this will reflect poorly on the website. In some instances we will recommend to client that they speak with a branding consultant about a new company image before engaging us to build them a website.

Fonts

Bad websites often have poor choice of font typeface as well as sizing. They might have a number of fonts being used and varying sizes. Or they might have serif fonts such as Times New Roman which are suitable for print material but unsuitable for the web. Bad sites might overuse capitals (which are often seen as shouting). Or they might Use Sentence Case Inappropriately.Some will have oversized fonts or fonts that are too small. Making the font size too small will make it harder for some people to read the text, so the font size you use must be a balance between large and
small.

Consistency is they key in a good website layout. There are a number of fonts that are classed as standard for use in websites, Verdana is one of them.

Disorganised

Some websites you visit do nothing to promote what it is they are trying to sell or what advice they want to give. Visitors should be able to tell by reading the content on your home page what the site’s purpose is.

Out of Date Updates

This one is really easy to spot. The news item on the home page is advertising a Christmas special and its Easter time! If website owners can’t take the time to use their website as a current advertising tool, what is the point of making contact with them. Good websites have accurate information and calendars. They take the time to update their content on a regular basis to ensure visitors return.

Slow to Load

Some websites think you need to have the latest and greatest in technology displayed on their website to attract visitors. They might have their favourite AC/DC song blaring in the background as you wait for the remainder of their site to load. They might have images which haven’t been optimised taking 10x longer to download than necessary. Whilst multimedia content has its place within website design, bad websites often go overboard with their use of it.

Excessive Popup Windows

Most browsers now come with tools to block popup windows. Bad websites often put important messages within a popup – for those who use these add on tools they are missing out on the information. Put your important messages in a central place on your website.

Obviously these are general comments however they are all pretty good indicators of a poor website and things that will turn astute visitors and potential customers off your site immediately. If your site suffers from these things, contact us today and we will show you how you can improve it or re-develop it into something that impresses potential clients and encourages them to make contact.


Written by Dan Norris, Director of Gold Coast Web Design agency Web Circle on 6 May 2008.

Leave a comment or share • Continue Reading →