Eww! My Website Smells Terrible!

How to avoid the mistakes that make most websites stink
By Derek Edwards , 123Triad Web Design

Trust me, if your website stinks then no amount of Febreze can save you. The worst part of it is that almost no one will tell you. So what can you do to make sure that your web presence smells like roses? The answer is simple: Solve Problems.

That’s right, “problems.” Your business needs to solve them AND your website must communicate this instantly. If you’re website isn’t solving problems for your clients (or at least explaining how you will solve them) then you might as well take your site and put it in the trash can with that 3-day-old tuna salad and they can both stink together.

“But, Mr. Web Designer, we solve problems all the time for our customers.” This is what you’re likely to say and I’m sure that you do solve truck loads of them but you’re still missing the point.

People have an extremely short attention span online (if it wasn’t for my first couple sentences, you wouldn’t be reading this article). If your site doesn’t (1) instantly grab their attention, (2) communicate your solutions to their problems, and then (3) give them an action to take, then you can forget about spending money to get traffic. Take that money and go on a vacation, at least you’ll enjoy that expense.

Every decision you make regarding the wording, design, and structure of your website should always be geared towards accomplishing the three things I listed above. Also, the next point is crucial to successfully applying these guidelines, and if you’re not careful you’ll choose not to follow it. Why would you do such a thing??? Read on…

I’d like you to take a blank piece of paper or sticky note or whatever you’ve got and write down these words on it, there’s only three of them so just do this for yourself. Here they are: “what”, “I”, “like”. Now take this piece of paper and burn it, trash it, shred it. These words do not exist for your web design purposes. This might seem silly, half of you probably didn’t even bother doing it, but it’s the number one mistake we see.

I cannot begin to tell you how many problems are caused by the person with the controlling interest in the website making decisions based on what he or she likes or thinks “looks good”. I promise you that your clients don’t care about your opinions of your website; they only want their problems fixed. Now before you go jumping off a bridge while pulling out your hair, rest assured that this tendency is human nature and it’s completely manageable. The key is to educate yourself, stay focused, and then be honest enough with yourself to take your personal opinions OUT of the process, and here’s exactly how you do it:

Take out a sheet of paper or sticky note (no, I’m not going to have you burn it) and write these two points down in big bold words:

1) The ONLY purpose for the existence of my website is to solve my client’s problems
2) How does the page I’m looking at solve their problems?
Now, when you make any decisions regarding the design of your website, be sure to seriously evaluate these two points first and you’ll be on the right track with your website. If you catch your opinions creeping in then eliminate them at all costs!

When you work with 123Triad you can feel good knowing that you are in control of this process. If you haven’t yet reviewed the high quality of the work that 123Triad delivers then I highly recommend you check out our online portfolio of over 1000 websites that we have completed at: www.123triad.com/portfolio.php. Then contact us to get your new website started!