When you kick off your next webstite or perhaps even with the one you already have, focus on what matters and what will get you results (sales, 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 that 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, … 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 you. Now…
5 Things To Stopy Obsessing Over On Your Website
- Perfect Aesthetics: Hire a good designer and pay them well, I’m not saying aesthetics don’t matter but don’t go overboard with flashy elements. Let you designer do what they do but get on with doing what you do as fast as possible. There is little evidence (if any) that an aesthetically perfect webstie affects the bottom line. So do what you need to in this department then get on with what will affect the bottom line. Note: I’m also not suggestion your site aesthetics should be anything other than professional, but “perfect” becomes an excuse for not doing other things.
- Placing Every Element In The Right Place: In the beginning 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 likely 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 anyway so don’t sweat 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) and stop worrying about vertical scrolling, it doesn’t really matter.
- Making Things Work Perfectly In IE6. I really wish I didn’t even have to address this but 2010 is the year that IE6 finally dies! Several big sites (including YouTube) have announced that they are dropping support for IE6. While I realize some people will still have to use it because their company is still standardized on it but it’s time even for them 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.
Remember,
Quality Content will get you much further than a flashy site.
Good marketing and language and copy-writing will get you farther than any particular color
Testing your pages, ad and other elements will get you much further than your intuition.
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.
