A pretty website is top of many entrepreneurs’ lists; they want a site which impresses, a site which looks stunning and which makes visitors feel as though they’ve arrived at a stylish place.
All of this is fine and looks certainly do count; however, it’s very important to realize that looks only pay off if your website actually works.
This may seem like an obvious statement but it’s an aspect of web design at which it’s surprisingly easy to fail.
Read on to learn more about the 3 issues to which you need to pay attention.
1: Getting bogged down in aesthetics
Websites are visual things; of course they are. The way a site looks seems to be a huge part of what makes people comfortable or happy to visit and to return for subsequent visits.
The problems which can occur when people concentrate too hard on the way a site will look as opposed to the way in which it functions are often serious.
Many entrepreneurs are extremely keen to share their well-developed and thought out ideas of how their site should look. They want lots of beautiful pictures, fancy graphics and unusual layouts.
They often forget that these are details which come after functionality. It’s far more important to work on the mechanics of your site than it is to work on the way it looks.
A website which doesn’t move quickly when the consumer wants it to will ultimately fail because people won’t stick around to wait for the lovely graphics to load. It’s a simple as that…they get bored and irritated by being made to wait…so they don’t.
If your site experiences a lot of this then Google will notice and this will have a knock-on effect on your SEO rankings.
By all means, plan the way you want your site to look but before you get really involved in that, make sure that the site is going to be easy to navigate!
2: Speed is everything
This can’t be emphasized enough; it’s vital that when your site is up and running, it really is up and running…faster than all its competitors.
The only way to ensure this is the case is good, solid design and well thought out layout. If your site experiences a high bounce rate, (this is the percentage of people who arrive at your site only to leave after viewing one page) then you need to find out the reason and fast.
Many sites suffer a high bounce rate because too much attention has been paid to the look of the site rather than the function of it.
3: Getting a balance
Looks matter though don’t they? Of course they do and that’s why you’re not wrong in wanting your site to have a great appearance. People are sensitive to colors, to shapes and to layout, they respond to the way a site looks so it makes sense to pay attention to those things.
But don’t do it to the detriment of your functionality. Function must come first and only then, once you have a site which works perfectly and quickly, can you devote time to making it look gorgeous.
