Stop Obsessing Over The Wrong Things On Your Website

When you kick off your next webstite or refresh the one you already have, focus on what matters and what will get you results (content, leads, whatever…), not what won’t. Put another way, don’t focus on things that really just serve to distract you from the real work of building a business website. Definte your goal and stay focused on the end result.

I work with clients all the time that focus intently on aesthetic details while completely ignoring their content (hint, content is far more important), their online marketing strategy, etc…

Hire a designer, and let them obsess over aesthetics. I’m not saying you shouldn’t pay attention, just don’t let the wrong details consume your time. Now…

5 Things To Stopy Obsessing Over On Your Website

Aesthetics: I won’t say aesthetics don’t matter at all, but don’t go overboard with flashy elements or seeking “perfection,” it’s a losers game. Let you designer do what they do so you can get on with building your business as fast as possible. There is little evidence, if any, that an aesthetically perfect webstie affects the bottom line. I’m won’t suggest your site aesthetics shouldn’t be professional, but if you don’t believe me that they really don’t matter that much just look at the Drudge Report, it’s one of the single ugliest sites on the net but they crush it with traffic. In fact The Drudge Report announced that they had served more than 9Billion pageviews for 2010 by November 15th. The blog is estimated to be worth $50Million. I rest my case…
Placing Every Element In The Right Place: It’s easy to want to get everything placed just right but the fact is you don’t know what the perfect place is for anything until you test it. Make some assumptions, and apply best practices but it’s more important to just get it done and then start figuring out if moving something around will alter the way people interact with your site. Don’t get sucked into what you think you know. Make your best guess then test. You’ll find out how often assumptions can be wrong.
The Perfect Shade of… Whatever: a.k.a. “Can I get that button in cornflower blue?” Pick the colors you want and work with your designer to make sure you apply complimentary colors and accents. But nailing down the perfect shade is a waste of time. Most monitors will show your colors somewhat differently anyway and there is no way for you to control that as tightly as you would like. Dial it in, and when you are 80% of they way there move on.
Pages That Scroll Vertically: I’m regularly asked to design sites where people don’t have to scroll… vertically. If you worry about this don’t. Vertical scrolling doesn’t affect usability and there is almost no way to put all of the content of most pages “above the fold” for every browser/resolution combination, so don’t waste time worrying about it. You might want to make sure certain elements reside above-the-fold so don’t eat up a ridiculous amount of space with your header (most of the time).
Making Things Work Perfectly In IE6. I really wish I didn’t even have to address this but 2010 is the year the IE6 death spiral finally accelerates! Several big sites (including YouTube) have announced that they have dropped support for IE6. While I realize some people will still have to use it because their company mandates they do, it’s time for everyone to get on with a more up-to-date browser. The web browser is easily the most important piece of software on your computer so it should be the one that is most up to date. If you insist on IE6 support (because you want it or because you really have to have it) then expect to pay extra for the design work.

Things to Remember:

Quality Content will get you much further than a flashy site.
Good marketing and copywriting will get you farther than any particular color
Testing your pages, and and other elements will serve you better than your assumptions.

A lot of people that fancy themselves designers that aren’t, and a lot of designers don’t really know the first thing about information architecture, so hire the right person for the right job and get on with building your business.