A website is the hub of your online marketing strategies, as it’s where potential customers usually learn about your business, and where most social marketing platforms lead to at some point.
There are almost 1 billion websites on the Internet, and human beings are spending more and more time online. Americans, for example, spend about 23 hours a week in cyberland.
What is becoming absolutely clear from all this is that loud, convoluted websites increasingly frustrate and annoy users.
Websites that Annoy
Marketing gurus know that a useful way to learn how to design a website is to look at some pages that were badly, maybe even horribly, designed. A first-hand experience with a bothersome website fuels a passion that can then be poured into building a simple website that is a pleasure to browse.
Take the website of Diller, Scofidio, & Renfro – as you log onto this website, you get the pleasure of waiting while 57 individual visual tiles are flipped over. You , head over to www.touchofmodern.com, where a text box demands your email address before allowing you to view the landing page. Websites should be welcoming…not annoying.
Websites that Embrace Simplicity
Just as hanging out on an annoying website can teach a designer or entrepreneur what to avoid, spending some quality time on cool, simple sites illuminates how simplicity of design makes would-be customers feel.
For example, www.wix.com breaks down the basic tenets of IX design so that even creative types that visibly cringe at the word “code” can learn what they want to.
You could also surf over to www.studionudge.com, where you will be greeted with a tasteful collage of samples of the work they do – would-be clients just click on an image to learn more.
Harvard Reviews Stickiness
The Harvard Business Review, in May of 2012, published an article on what makes a customer, to use their term, “sticky.” A sticky customer is described as one who is likely to complete the steps necessary to buy a product, and is also likely to buy it again and recommend said product.
So what exactly pleases these sticky customers, and what do they value above all else? The answer is simplicity, as the sticky customer wants businesses to make things as easy and clear as possible for shoppers. A sticky customer would not hang out at an unnecessarily complicated website.
Websites Imitate Life
We know that as the Internet has become louder, human beings have responded by wanting it to quiet down. This truism is borne out in other areas as well in how we want to live in the physical world.
The blogosphere is spilling over with advice on how to embrace a different way of living. A popular blog called Slow Your Home offers advice on how to create an uncluttered bedroom, and suggests that its readers embrace the fine art of doing absolutely nothing.
Again, your website is the heart of an online marketing strategy, and there is a consensus on this point among those successful marketers who know. A simple, functional website is an absolute requirement for the future. I strongly suggest keeping this in mind when creating or revising your website. In the meantime, my team and I have created several extremely simple websites that we send visitors to and make sales from daily. I generate leads for some of my students as well. Click here to see if this done-for-you traffic & sales system is right for you.
