The success of your website is heavily determined by first impressions. According to one study, it takes just 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for people to form an opinion about your website. That opinion determines whether they’ll stay and learn about your business or leave because you simply did not grab their attention from your opening proposition.
Here are the most common issues leading to a website redesign project.
1. The website design looks dated
An outdated or unattractive web design can look unprofessional, leading to mistrust within your visitors. Forbes say that in a study titled Trust and Mistrust of Online Health Sites, participants were asked to search for relevant health information and determine which factors influenced trust of a given site over another. 94% of the factors were due to elements of web design. Wow!
What can we take away from this study? An attractive and modern looking site is a lot more likely to gain trust from people browsing the web. Why is trust so important you ask? People that have trust in your website are far more likely to buy your products, fill in that contact form or pick up the phone.
The biggest culprits of a dated website include:
- Websites with a narrow container leaving half the page empty
- Poor typography choices that come from the 90s
- Overused stock photography of smiley, suit wearing models
- Clunky paragraphs and basic templates that make it impossible to skim
How do you fix these issues for a more modern looking website I hear you ask?
Make use of modern screens, especially in the B2B world where mobile has not taken over. Current website development and design techniques means that we’re way less restricted and no longer forced to use fixed, narrow containers. Using the full width of screen allows us to be more creative in optimising your content for great engagement.
Spending a little money on a license to use a font that represents your brand, is easy to read, and stands out from the crowd is a super-effective way of making a great first impression. Changing the font on your website will have a much bigger impact than you may first think so don’t be afraid to experiment and trust your design team.
Simply say no to overused stock photography. No photo is better than one that blends in with a million other sites. Use bespoke illustrations, invest in real photos and be selective when a stock photo is the only option.
Nobody will read a ten-thousand-word paragraph. With the rise in social media, the average attention span of a human is 6-8 seconds. That’s not long at all. Making your content easy to skim by creating smaller paragraphs broken up with headlines, bullets, images, video and anything else that is relevant. The only time you should see paragraph after paragraph is on an informative piece of content, like this article 😉