How to Give Your Website Visitors What they Want

As business owners, we have the best of intentions, don’t we? We build our brand, make our product the best it can be, use our time efficiently, and really try to serve our clients and customers. But along the way, sometimes we get caught up in the “next big thing” — the next big marketing fad, the next big design trend — and it sometimes steers our focus away from the people that we are trying to reach. This can especially be the case for website owners (and their designers.) So in order to reach our visitors effectively, we need to step outside of what WE want and really listen to what our visitors want. They DON’T WANT…Sarah Bray, Creative Director of S. Joy Studios shares:

• To wait one minute (or even 15 seconds) for your flash presentation to load. And if they do decide to be patient and wait, they will not want to do it more than once.

• To right-click on something (say…a chunk of text to use as a quote on their blog) and receive a message saying “CAUGHT YOU! Stealing content or images is wrong!” Yes, you don’t want people stealing your images, but when you disable right-clicking, you alienate your visitors and make them feel like idiots, even if they were only trying to promote you in the process. There are better ways to protect your images (watermarking, for instance.)

• To have to guess what your navigation buttons mean. Clearly labeled navigation helps your users find what they need quickly.

• To have a new window opening up for every link. People who visit your site more than likely have learned to use their “back” button. Let them choose when they want to open a new window — don’t choose for them.

• To click on a link, just to find a page that says “This page is under construction.” It looks unprofessional and wastes your visitors’ time. Do not include links to pages that are not finished yet.

On the other hand, they DO want…

• Consistent navigation. If your navigation links are in a certain place on one page, they should be in the same place on every page. Otherwise, your visitors will be having to learn a new navigation system on every page where it differs.

• Fast-loading pages. Optimize your images, avoid over-using plugins, and do not use HTML authoring software (it makes bulky, glitchy code that causes slow load times and rendering problems.)

• Bullet points. Lots of bullet points. You may be surprised to know that many visitors will not actually read your entire article. Reading long bouts of text online can be hard on the eyes, and your visitors really appreciate it when you help them along. Putting keywords in bold also helps.

• An easy-to-read format. Especially if your site is content-driven (meaning: you have a lot of articles.) You don’t have to use a huge font size, but try increasing your line height (the space above and below each sentence.) It makes it much easier to read.

• Excellent, useful content. Never forget that information is the currency of the web. It’s not about giving them the information that YOU want to give them. It’s about giving them the information that they’re already looking for.

We have a saying in our studio: Design gets people. Usability keeps them. There are a ton of things you can do to improve your website, but if you only follow one rule, let it be that you always center your website on the needs of your visitors.

Sarah Bray is the Creative Director of S. Joy Studios. She is a web developer, graphic designer, and mother of two. She also writes about web design, usability, and working at home (with your spouse, no less) at the S.Joy Studios Blog.