6 Reasons Why Great Web Designing Is Like Nailing The First Date
Here’s How You Stop Them From Leaving
A good website is like a good first date. If you don’t prepare for it, you won’t get a second. Bad ‘first dates’ often scares off consumers, which leads to high bounce rates and low SEO rankings. To avoid that, refrain from these fatal mistakes on your ‘first date’:
- No Link leh
Backlinks are important for SEO, but they have to be strategic. They are like the stories that you tell to your date. Spamming them with stories about you turns your date into a monologue. A date is for dialogues. Similarly, don’t turn your consumers away faster than it brought them in with all that link spamming.
Backlinks to unreliable sites reduce the credibility of your own. It kills the vibe – cut them off or before your website dragged down in the dumps with them. You can disavow bad links too – we know they’re really bad for your website ranking.
Also, remove any incoherent or broken links. Like the broken links, if it leads you nowhere. That goes the same for your date as well.
- Ads. Ads. ADS?!
Nothing irks a consumer more than a site filled with ads, spam and pop-ups. That is like wearing a shirt with sponsors’ logos all over to your date.
If you have some sort of sponsor ads that you must place into your site, position them neatly in a side banner, without interfering with your website’s content.
We don’t recommend pop-up ads. Don’t even get us started. Not only are they intrusive, they can get really annoying.
- Get Mobile… and be responsive.
You have to reach your date wherever he/she is. In case you didn’t know, mobile has taken over desktop for website browsing, which means websites have to adapt to this as well. If your website is not optimised for mobile, you are probably turning away a lot of potential first-dates. It is absolutely critical that your site does not contain any Flash plugins, which are anti-mobile.
Just because you are optimising your site for mobile, does not mean that you have to compromise on your site quality. There are various ways to get around that.
If your site frustrates them on their mobile, it won’t be their smartphones they will be slamming.
- Quality Matters
If you are just telling cock and bull stories, your date can tell. So can your consumers.
Quality content is a necessity in this adage. You must either entertain or help them, and not just toot your own horn. If you are having trouble with coming up with proper stories, call on a wingman, or in this case, an external agency with copywriting experience.
If you can’t improve your date’s life, why get started?
- Don’t Let Them Wait.
Do you let your date wait for you? You don’t. Similarly for your consumers, don’t let them wait. In this age of fast, quick and snappy, time has become ever so precious websites have to adapt. If your consumers wait for more than 3s, chances are they will no longer be your consumers. 40% of consumers abandon sites that take more than 3s to load. Time to get rid of your autoplays, large images and preloader pages. Compress them (without compromising the quality) for a faster loading site.
Don’t let your date wait, because they won’t.
- Look Great, and Be Practical
If you want to impress your date, you have to be sell a complete package. Personality and substance takes the cake! An out-of-fashion and sleazy outfit on a first date is not going to impress. Similarly, your website design and plugins cannot be outdated and obsolete.
It is not just aesthetics and looking great, it has to be practical and understandable, too. Your content (keyword density) and messaging must be legible and clear, which means fonts & font size choice matters, so pick the right ones. Keep your stories short and sweet, and use clear subheaders to segment any long content. Short sentences too. Your website is not a mid-year exam composition question.
Rule of thumb: Be beautiful inside and out, so that the right one would stay.
The user’s experience on your website is important and it can be a hassle to plan for. Just like a first date. Sometimes, it is better to let someone else plan it for you.
Let I Concept be the matchmaker between you and you consumers. With vast experience designing stunning websites and eCommerce sites for SMEs and MNCs, we are sure to help you with yours!
