Coaches, counselors, and naturopathic doctors have been clamoring for a website review lately. Whether they’ve paid a designer beaucoup bucks or have gone the do-it-yourselfer route, something isn’t working as well as they’d like.
So I’ve had the chance to critique dozens of sites in the last couple months, and have found that too many solopreneurs are making these website design mistakes.
How will your website stack up?
Mistake #1 — Visual Clutter. Landing on your homepage should immediately evoke warm and welcoming feelings. A page that has too many columns, too much to read, too many colors, elements overlapping, and not enough white space between text and graphics overwhelms the eye. When the eye is overwhelmed the brain can’t take in the content that you’ve spent weeks honing to perfection.
Solution: Less is more. Simplify the visual impact. Help the visitor’s eye move down the page through the most important pieces of your marketing message.
Mistake #2 — Unappealing Color Scheme. Color is the life-energy of your website. It’s the visual representation of your personality, and it’s an important factor in why visitors stay on or leave your site. In marketing terms, it’s a major part of your business identity branding. Think about the colors your client niche would be attracted to, and the colors that they associate unpleasant experiences with. Pepto Bismol pink is a turn off. Red or black might convey danger. Orange jangles some of us, while my favorite lime green might be jarring for others.
Solution: Be intentional and strategic about the use of colors. Know what your ideal clients will respond to. When in doubt, neutral colors are best in large amount, with splashes of more vibrant colors for emphasis.
Mistake #3 — Plain Vanilla. A home page without a photo of you, without a little color to pull the eye through the message, without some kind of minimal graphic interest with logos, line drawings, buttons, badges, pictures of happy clients, etc, and with type that goes across the entire width of the page makes for visual boredom. A little goes a long way, but some is absolutely necessary. This ultra minimalist approach isn’t “professional”, it’s moribund.
Solution: At least get a decent photo of you near the top of your home page, create section subheads in larger font, and use ONE color for those subheads to put some life into your page.
Mistake #4 — Fighting Fonts. Designers and DIY templates are currently in love with grey font on white background. Very bad idea. This really makes the reader work hard to focus and comprehend your message. And a lot of DIY website builders are overly enjoying the range of different fonts available. Don’t forget that a font is first a visual element, just like a picture or clip art. When you use too many different fonts, it creates a more subtle type of visual clutter. And worse, many computers / some browsers will not display unusual fonts, so the effect you are trying for won’t be seen, but will mess up your formatting.
Solution: If you like an unusual font, use it for your banner at the top of the page, or in very Very limited ways for emphasis elsewhere. Stick to the universally accepted computer fonts for the content you really want read. Those are:
- the serifs like Times New Roman, Georgia, and Palatino
- the semi-serifs like Lucida and Trebuchet
- the san-serifs such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica.
You might think that all of these mistakes are subjective, and to a degree they are. But when your website isn’t converting visitors into clients, and your site stats show that people aren’t staying on your site for more than 5 seconds, these mistakes will be the most crucial things to fix.
No Hype Coaching Questions: Look at your own home page. Are you guilty of making any of these mistakes? Are you making more than one of them?
No Hype Help: Is your website the strongest member of your marketing team? It should be. If it isn’t, a comprehensive review and repair consult can help you know exactly what needs to be changed.
