First impressions count
When someone lands on your website you want them to immediately think, “Aha, this is what I’m looking for.”
Your message about who you are or what you do should be obvious. If someone has been Googling they will have far too many results to follow, they will just pick a few and give each a second or two before deciding to stay or hit the back button.
Think about how you present your information, and how the visitor is going to follow what you present.
If you get it right, they will stay on your site longer and more of them will be encouraged to do business with you.
Make important info obvious
Make sure that what’s important about who you are or what you do is clear and obvious when someone lands on your page. Don’t bury your message in an overly complicated layout.
If you offer key products or services make sure they can be seen.
Make it obvious how visitors can contact you.
Assume nothing.
Use clear headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs
Headings have a dual role, they tell the visitor more about you and they entice them into clicking for more information.
Think about how much effort newspapers put into creating effective ‘clickbait’ headlines.
As well as being a necessary way to lay out your website, they should encourage further exploration.
This is especially important if the visitor has landed on one of your sub-pages and not the main home page. This is likely the result of them Googling for something and finding you that way. (Well done for making it search engine friendly!)
Bullet points are a good way of drawing attention to a list of key points by making them stand out against a background of text.
Break your text up into small pieces so your visitors eyes don’t glaze over when confronted with a wall of text. It allows them to skim read and focus on whatever is important to them.
Remember what ‘TLDR’ means – Too Long Didn’t Read.
Simplify your navigation
Your menu should primarily be organised to help visitors find out what they need to know. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your website is a mini Wikipedia site – it is not, it’s a sales tool.
Cascading menus are an excellent way of presenting a large website. Make the groupings logical and have a maximum of six or seven links at each level.
If your website is regularly updated and new pages are frequently added, double check the menu is still accurate.
Ensure buttons and links are obvious and clickable
It’s very important to let visitors explore your website and to follow links for further information. Those links need to be clear about what else the visitor can read about, and the links themselves need to work. Updating a website with new information or an improved layout may mean some links no longer work.
Go through every page and check every link.