Website Design – How to Banish Boredom From Your Website and Entice Your Visitors to Stay Longer
With lots of new websites and blogs springing up virtually every minute it becomes more and more important to make your online presence unique and attractive for your visitors. Of course your website needs to have a professional look and feel about it. It needs to function well and it should be easy to navigate.
One thing you want to avoid on your website is boredom. Yes, Boredom with a capital B! You want your visitors to stay, don’t you? It seems obvious but there is nothing more off putting than a boring website – have a look around and find the ones that simply don’t appeal to you, the ones that bore you, the ones you don’t bother reading any further. It might be different for each individual but in general boredom is generated by a number of things: * too much text that is poorly formatted and monotonous. People are so stressed out and time poor that they don’t want to read a lot – at least initially. Once you grabbed their attention and they know that you offer worthwhile material they will be willing to read more because they know that you will not be wasting their time.
* Print that is too small or fancy. Remember not everybody realises that they can make the print bigger on their screen with a simple click on control and their mouse scroller. Some readers don’t have the technical resources to do so. Especially the baby boomer generation likes bigger print.
* Lack of images or photos (remember the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words). A picture will make visitors to your site curious and wanting to read what your site or particular post or article is all about.
* The text is not broken up into manageable “chunks”, lacks sub headings, bigger headings and has no interesting colour interspersed.
* The same old format all the time – think about putting up an audio or a video instead of written text, people have different ways of absorbing information, intersperse the written word with other mediums or give them a choice to listen, watch or read. Videos keep visitors on your website for a longer time.
* Bad colour choices – this will of course depend a lot on your target market. Any colour has its place but make sure they harmonise as a whole (you can use a colour wheel to help you determine which colours match – there are some good websites, just Google the term colour wheel and you will find all sorts of fascinating things)
* Print that is hard to read (like white on black or another dark background)
* Always remember that less is more
* Think “Google” – white background, dark print, a splash of happy, clean primary colours, the occasional picture or symbol for special occasions. I am not advocating that your site becomes a Google clone but I believe that part of Google’s success is the simplicity of its site design, the use of clear primary colours and the lack of clutter on the page.
I hope that this article has given you some food for thought on how to banish boredom from your website when designing or re-designing your web page. Remember – sometimes a simple, basic site gets more traffic and business than a super expensive, very flash site. Start somewhere and build on it, otherwise you might never start. The most important thing is to get started at all!
