Is Your Website a Relic?
The bar for web design is rising every year. Companies are investing heavily in their online presence and developing pages that are increasingly intuitive, accessible and engaging. Similarly, customers have higher expectations in 2022. Shopping online or engaging with a digital brand shouldn’t feel like a chore to them. To avoid falling behind, businesses need to be on the cutting edge of website design. Here are some signs that your website is due for an update.
Is it Mobile Accessible?
One of the biggest online changes in marketing over the years is the shift away from websites designed for computers and towards those made for mobile devices. Smartphone users make up between 50-80% of a website’s traffic, depending on the industry. If your digital presence isn’t optimized for mobile devices, at best only half of your potential audience is getting a user-friendly experience. Every step of your website design process needs to account for, if not outright emphasize, Android and iPhone usage. Our team at Innovative Advertising always approaches website projects with a “mobile-first’ mindset.
Have you Trimmed the Fat?
When dealing with anything digital, there’s a tendency to continuously add new features. ”Feature Creep” is what it’s called. However, there’s a point where this becomes counterproductive. Remember the golden rule of crafting a good user experience, less is more. A site with too many page elements or unnecessary content can overwhelm and distract the visitor. The goal should be to streamline the design so site visitors can easily navigate the content they seek and complete the necessary actions. Take a look at your site, and really ask, “does this need to be there?”. If you find yourself saying yes too often, maybe it’s time for an update.
Does Your Website Lead the User?
When someone visits your house for the first time, you give them a tour because it’s the polite thing to do. After all, your guest might not enjoy the dinner party if they have to open every door to find the bathroom. Web design employs a similar principle. Graphics, weighted words, fonts and colors are used to guide the user along, building a consistent, intuitive experience for your audience. If users have to ask, “where is the…?” or “How do I?” Then, that’s a problem that should be addressed at the design level.
Is the Information Digestible?
Have you noticed how this blog is separated into clearly labeled, short sections, not one large block of text? Users are more likely to read four separated, one-paragraph sections than one big paragraph section. In fact, website design is even less forgiving. You only have 55 milliseconds to make an impact on the user. Our team at Innovative Advertising utilizes a concept called “visual hierarchy” to make the most of an audience’s attention span. That means, minimizing the amount of text, emphasizing pictures or infographics and using white/negative space to break content up into digestible sections. Your site needs to hook the visitor quickly to keep them there.
Does the User Enjoy Your Site
There’s one simple question that underlies all the above sections, is the user experience optimized? “While many factors contribute to a successful website,” Anna Schiff, our Director of Design, states, “the user experience is always the first and most important to consider. A favorable user experience combined with an overarching strategy will help to build trust and fulfill the site’s intended purpose — whether that is engaging the user to take action, learn or share information, etc.” That simple rule has served our agency well on clients from Tabasco to Globalstar. Innovative Advertising has the experience, resources, and passion to keep your website on the cutting edge of web design.
About Innovative Advertising
Innovative Advertising is a full-service marketing firm and digital advertising agency, with offices in Greater New Orleans and Nashville. We partner with B2C, B2B, and non-profits to create completely original design, digital, advertising, public relations and media solutions. Following a disciplined approach, our team conducts analyses and optimizations of these cross-platform brand development efforts to create sound marketing solutions with demonstrable results.