Web Site Development Keep It Clean
Web Site Development Keep It Clean
"Thanks for all your help with our website and your
suggestions. We get so many comments on our web site.
Web reservations are going great. Your other marketing
advice is working well too!"
Thanks
-Kathy, Innkeeper
Inn at The Rostay, Bethel, Maine
By Mark Silver - Heart Of Business
Everyone wants to live surrounded by beauty. Beauty
soothes the soul, and lifts the spirit. It inspires
us and keeps us healthy. We all want beauty.
Can you have beauty in your website? Sure you can,
and it's important to have your website be pleasing
to the folks you want to help. Unfortunately, this
desire to have beauty and to please folks means that
you can spend a great deal of time creating a
'unique and beautiful' web design that people
actually avoid. How can you spend so much time on
beauty, sacrifice so much money with a designer, and
still end up with a mess?
Do you do Frescoes?
No one would complain about the beauty of the
Sistine Chapel in Rome.
Michelangelo spent four years, from July, 1508
through October, 1512, painting over 5,000 square
feet of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.
Unfortunately, Michelangelo was a sculptor, and
loved working in marble. Prior to the Sistine
Chapel, he had only painted briefly as a student of
Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence - which means that
he got off to a slow start as he learned how to
paint frescoes.
Luckily for him, Michelangelo was already an
accomplished artist. He wasn't exactly doing the
Sistine Chapel as a free promotional effort. Pope
Julius II commissioned him for those four years, and
didn't seem to mind that it took Michelangelo a
while to get in a groove.
History reports that one of the Pope's motivations
was to outdo Pope Alexander VI. So, the whole idea
was to create an amazingly glorious ceiling that
would stun everyone who saw it.
Are you trying to stun your visitors? Remember the
purpose of your website: to create a relationship
with the right people, connect with their hearts and
needs, and to help them take the next step in
relationship to what you provide. If you aren't
being commissioned to paint the ceiling of your
website by a fabulously wealthy Pope, and if you
aren't trying to stun your visitors with beauty, I
suggest you relax, just a little bit, any attachment
you might have to beauty and uniqueness around your
website.
Your visitor is waiting for dinner.
Imagine showing up at a fríend's house to eat.
You've worked all day, you're hungry and you've been
looking forward to dinner. Yet, once you arrive,
they keep you waiting for three hours while they
pull out family home movies, or their wedding album.
It's not that you wouldn't eventually like to see
those things. But first, can we have dinner, please?
The Two Functions of Your Design
Absolutely prepare and present the food with love
and beauty. But just remember that your visitor is
looking for food, not frescoes. It's been shown that
when a visitor comes to a website, design plays two
primary functions:
(1) to show that the website is solid and
professional-looking enough that the business can be
trusted, and
(2) to make sure that the visitor can find what
he/she needs really easily without having to guess
or hunt.
As long as you are meeting those two needs, your
design is going to work.
So, where is it safe to bring forth beauty and
inspiration on your site, and where will it keep you
stuck to the ceiling for four years?
Keys to Website Design
* Things to avoid.
Avoid putting a pattern behind your text, or using a
text color that isn't very dark. In fact, I
recommend that you stick with black text on a white
background. Millions of novels of great variety,
beauty and talent are written, all printed black
text on a white background.
As a general rule, avoid animation and oversized
photos and illustrations - anything that distracts
from the food you want your visitor to eat.
Avoid unique design layouts. Many websites look the
same structurally - and so do human beings. You
don't have to look at the back of someone's knees to
find their eyes. People know how to connect with
each other more easily in part because of structural
similarities.
Your visitor has been trained to expect certain
conventions in web design, so they can find what
they are looking for. Don't play a guessing game
with them by creating some outlandishly creative and
confusing design.
* Things to do.
Keep your text front and center. Keep your
navigation either across the top, or down one side,
with clear labels. Don't use more than two columns -
one for the navigation or side text, and one for the
main content of the page. Have a clear banner across
the top with a simple message about your business.
* Things of beauty and inspiration
Make your banner beautiful and inspiring, without
being cluttered. Use colors you love.
Use creative bullets rather than just the usual
round variety.
Use color highlights around navigation buttons, and
in the frame around your page.
* Above all, don't agonize over it.
If you don't have a website yet, or your website
isn't effective and you are upgrading it, bring in
what creativity you have, but don't agonize over the
beauty aspects. Your visitors are waiting to be fed!
Once you start having a lot of visitors coming to
your website, and your business is humming, you can
take the time and space to bring out the fine china
for them.
My very best to you and your business.
About The Author
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of
Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can
Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to
Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small
business owners around the globe succeed in business
without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters
of the book online:
http://www.heartofbusiness.com