first impressions matter
First Impressions Matter!
When you meet someone for the first time, usually their first impression will determine how much of your time you are willing to give them… and the way you view a website is much the same.
Depending on the usability and design of your website, it all comes down to the first impression. You have about five seconds to make capture the attention of your audience. A visually pleasing design scheme will help that first glance last longer and retain users.
Is your website easy to use? Is your product or brands key message clearly defined? Is it aesthetically pleasing? And does your website design make your user want to navigate beyond the home page?
All of these are imperative in whether or not you are engaging potential clients. They may very well be a big deal breaker if they cannot find the information they are looking for easily and quick enough.
There is nothing more frustrating than not being are to clearly navigate your way around a website. If it's too hard, then it is just as easy to go back to google and search for a similar business online with quite possibly a much more functional website design.
One feature of website design that is becoming largely popular are long scrolling sites. Here at Marketing Mafia HQ we like to use this technique for a lot of our web content and can see many advantages of the concept.
The days of "above the fold" are over where the industry led designers to believe that in order to get their reader's attention they needed to cram all the information above the front page's halfway fold because users didn't like scrolling.
It is still an important factor, that whatever is on the first screen will influence the user's first impression however, there are new ways of designing a website to capture the users attention such as incorporating imagery, videos and typography. Choosing key words/messages or a call to action for the front of your webpage that will capture the users attention is important and allows you to draw in the user to want to find out more and start scrolling for more information.
Rather than having to navigate from page to page to access information, users are able to scroll down, resulting in a quicker way of accessing information. Especially since mobile users have now surpassed desktop users, website designers are having to adjust accordingly to accommodate to users needs. Thus being scrolling is becoming a much more beneficial concept than tapping through page-by-pate navigations.
Long scrolling offers opportunities for storytelling that page-by-page navigation just can't match. The techniques gives users more control over pacing and the continual immersion avoids the detrimental lag between pages. The ease of use promotes interactivity and increases time on site.
Long scrolling provides designers with the chance to create a more minimalistic site which could increase the amount of user interaction as the layout feels clean without being too sparse. If users like the interface and find it intuitive and fun to use, then they won’t really mind the length of the scroll (as long as it’s not atrociously long).
Check out our Mafia website to see how we have implemented the scrolling method in a fun way of showing off our business, staff and work!
Below is an example of a poorly designed website. It is way too busy and the information is scattered causing confusion and frustration for the user.
It also has no structure of any sort therefore the page is cluttered with a number of fonts, colours and low quality images. It distracts the user from any real information of importance about the event.
Nowadays, a good website design is a must! The user must be able to find information quickly and without any trouble. The design should lead the eye from what’s most important to secondary items by incorporating white space and typography. Images and colours can be used for calls to action. However it is important to choose the right images for your website and of high quality. A good design will create trust and guide visitors to take action.
As almost everything you can think of can be found online. A lot of people are turning to the online world to shop, book appointments and even interact with others so it's important to stand out from your competition. Users will make a million different assumptions about your company or brand based solely on the website design. It’s your job to make sure the site sends out the message you want people to receive about your business.
If this blog has got you questioning the design, functionality and usability of your website, then maybe it is time to consider a revamp to your website.
Our team at Marketing Mafia can help create a website design that will make you stand out from your competitors. Give us a call today to discuss how we can take your business further!
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