Be Clear

Be Clear.

Because a web site is often the first impression your company will make with people, it's natural to want to make it cool and hip and flashy and attention-getting and eye-popping. You want to present all of the information on the home page, because you don't want people to get there and not know everything about you right away. You want a gazillion links to all of your pages, because you spent a gosh darn lot of time building those pages, so people should see them! After all, they came to you, didn't they?

The problem, of course, is that just isn't how it works. Sure, someone may be on your web site looking at the home page, but they might have stumbled across your site somewhere else. Or saw it on a search engine. Or heard about you from a friend or business partner. They might be mildly curious, or they might be deeply interested. Either way, overwhelming them with a deluge of information is absolutely the worst thing you could do.

Rather, give them the basics. Very, very basic. Tease them. Make them want to explore the site further. Make them wonder-- just a little bit-- about the details of what you do. And make it pretty, make it eye-catching, but don't make it dance on the screen or have blinking buttons or moving links or garish colors. (Unless, of course, that's your business.)

In short, a web site is a tool: a means to an end. Maybe the "end" for your business is a sale. Maybe it's someone hiring you for your services. Maybe it's building a community. Or maybe you just want to share a message with the world. Regardless, it's important that you know what the "end" is, and determine the easiest, quickest, clearest way to guide someone to that end. Sure, it might be useful to throw in some pages about your company history, or biographies of the board members, or whatever other supplemental content seems worthwhile. But those pages should be secondary-- pushed a little to the back-- so that the path to the end is right there in front of the user, beckoning them.

Keep in mind that most people visiting a web site aren't really all that interested in reading a long page of text about your company history. Most people take about ten to fifteen seconds to scan the home page, figuring out where they're going next. Then they have their mission and they're on it, and they don't want to be sidetracked by a bunch of other links or pages or process. If you're hoping to sell something, have a huge link on the home page that says Product Catalog and on every product have a huge button that says Buy Now or Add to Cart or something else so completely and utterly foolproof that even Grandma Mabel, shopping online for the first time, will know exactly what to do. Using clever buttons that say Add Me! will only make people stop and think, "Add me to... what? A cart? A wishlist? An equation?" And every time they have to stop and think about what they're doing, their frustration level is rising just a little and they're thinking it's not worth their time and pretty soon they're heading over to Amazon because everyone knows Amazon sells everything in the world.

Before we break our own rules here and continue rambling for pages upon pages of text that no one will actually read, we'll sum up by saying there are a lot of misconceptions about web sites, and here at Zing we can help you get through the confusion and tell your customers what they really want to know about. Which is, of course, you.