Does Your Website Creep You Out?

It’s October, the creepiest and spookiest time of the year. It’s the only time when you can see evil clowns, witches, werewolves, jack-o-lanterns, and goblins galore. You may only see and feel creepy-crawly things in October, but we see marketing mistakes that make us creepy-crawly every month of the year. We’ve identified some creepy crawly web design mistakes you should avoid.

1. The Curse of the Slow-Loading Web pages

When visitors come to your site, they want an efficient user experience characterized by fast-loading web pages. No one wants to wait several seconds for a web page to finish loading! That just makes everyone frustrated; besides, patience isn’t a strong suit of a site visitor – nor should it be.

2. No Visual Hierarchy

“When you make everything important, you insure that nothing is important.”

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of visual hierarchy. Whether you have or not, I can tell you know it when you see it, especially bad visual hierarchy. When you visit a website and your eyes dart from place to place trying to understand the web page – this is bad visual hierarchy at work and it’s bad for two reasons:

1. It leaves web visitors with a feeling of unrest, unsatisfied, or uncomfortable.
2. For viewers to read your content, and convert them into paying customers, you need to create as few barriers as possible.

Have you noticed how long paged or one-page websites are creeping up everywhere? Science has proven the visual hierarch on really long pages better engages your audience. By forcing visitors to scroll through a scroll-like page design, you frame your messaging and limit their attention to one element at a time.

3. Creepy & Outdated Design

Almost every customer likes to explore online sites that are visually attractive and up-to-date. In addition to its visual appeal, websites that were carefully designed have better features and we tend to easily fall in love with sites who are investing in effective website layout designs. In this modern age, more and more businesses are getting online, so it’s all the more important to distinguish yourself with attractive, relevant, and effective designs. Too many ads, columns, white empty spaces, scrunched navigation links, and blurry graphics all lead to creepy and outdated websites.

4. Boring Web Content

How do you differentiate yourself when everyone is trying to have epic content on well-thought-out websites?

People like to buy from companies they can relate to not from a company sounding like some frivolous marketing automaton? Your prospect isn’t going to like nor trust you, because you used certain buzzwords (“leverage”, “synchronicity”, ‘mindshare”, etc.). If anything, a website full of buzzwords is going to make it hard to understand what you do. You might even be able to inject some personality into your copy when you’re not limited to stodgy business-speak. You can use industry jargon, just ensure it’s understandable and adds value.

Believe it or not, design isn’t all art. There is a science in designing something. Not only do colors have personality inherently attached to them (red= anger/stop, green= sustainability/nature, etc.), but there’s also a science in how you combine colors.

Some colors go together beautifully and some don’t. A big part of an enjoyable user experience is looking at a site with a harmonious and inviting color scheme. That’s why ugly color combinations are hard to forgive. We will spare you a full explanation of “the color wheel”, but these websites will educate you in color theory and how to get it right.

About the emotions of colors

Bad Example and Good Example. See the difference?

5. A Lack of Conversion Opportunities

Think about it like this. Janey Mills comes to your website and fully understands the problems you solve and likes what she sees. She simply feels comfortable on your website and has a feeling you’d be great to work with, because your web copy is straightforward and fun to read. So…now what? She can’t find what to do next, fill out a “contact us” form? Let’s hope she doesn’t give up and check her emails, because then you might’ve lost your chance. Just hope she remembers you tomorrow. That’s terrifying, if you ask me. Don’t only spend time designing a beautiful site, create conversion opportunities as well.

Last, but not least, one of the most terrifying, creepy crawly things you can do is create a website that only looks good. An attractive website might win you some design awards, but it’s does not guarantee any customers. You can use beautiful fonts, perfect color combinations, and original illustrations, but your success in inbound marketing will be capped if you don’t also have plenty of conversion opportunities.

Conclusion

So there you have it… five terrifying, creepy crawly design mistakes and how to avoid them. Now, go forth into the world and design a website with super straightforward web copy, scientifically-derived colors, plenty of conversion opportunities, and expertly apply visual hierarchy.

If you have any pressing design questions or projects, or other inbound marketing questions, simply comment below or shoot us an email at hello@twingenuitygraphics.com.