Computer and Web Articles

I found myself struggling to read content on three websites this week.

Not fun. Very frustrating.

The sidebar of one website contained baby blue text on a grass green background, the second website displayed dark gray text on top of a medium gray, and the third website had red text on a royal blue background.

The fact that I, with my pretty darn good eyesight, had to strain to read content in these websites had me wondering what all the people out there with poor eyesight are doing when they arrive at similar visual challenges.

How long does it take people with less-than-perfect eyesight to give up and click away? How many businesses are losing money because their sites’ visitors cannot read their content due to a simple lack of color contrast?

Take a look at your website. Is the text easy to read? Don’t take the basic concept of contrast lightly; all the energy and money you’ve spent advertising, working on your website, and bettering your search engine rankings could be going right down the drain if you’re forcing people to struggle and strain just to read your site’s text.

Does your website contain forms for visitors to fill out?  A general contact form? An online store checkout form? A special product inquiry form? If your site contains even just one form, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions; make sure your forms are working for you—not against you.

1. Are you asking site visitors to provide you with irrelevant information? Honestly; why are you requiring people give you their home and business phone numbers when all they’d like to do is ask you a quick question?
2. Are you trying to collect more information than necessary? Do whatever you can to minimize the amount of time it takes for a site visitor to contact you via your online forms.  Just because I want to make contact with your company does *not* mean I want to give up my lunch break by having to fill out a mile-long form.
3. Do you take care of your visitors after they submit their information? I’ve used forms where, after hitting Submit, the page flashes and I suddenly find myself looking at a completely empty version of the form I just filled out. No note saying “your information has been submitted”. No text saying “Thank you for filling out our form.” Nothing letting me know when I should expect a response. Do I fill out the form again? Did my inquiry go through? A simple, clear confirmation message can prevent confusion and frustration related to your online forms.
4. Do you have “Clear” or “Reset” button at the bottom of your form near your Submit button? If you do, get rid of it. Now. People do not take time out of their day to visit your website, carefully fill out your online form, get to the bottom–and then delete all the information they just typed out. Clear and Reset buttons only increase the likelihood that you’ll frustrate your site’s visitors; these buttons do nothing but make it easier for your visitors to accidentally delete all the information they just entered.

You told your webmaster to make sure that music plays the instant a visitor arrives on your homepage. I mean, you LOVE that music; it just gives the right “feel” to your site. It really sets the tone and represents your company’s products and/or services.  The music makes your website feel more relaxing/energetic/fun/enter your own adjective here.

As a professional web designer, I strongly urge you to consider not automatically playing music upon your visitors’ arrival to your website. Why?

• Your visitor might already have music playing on her computer’s speakers – trying to play your song play over the top of your visitor’s music is rude, and it’s pretty darn confusing when one suddenly hears two songs playing at once.
• Your audio file could potentially be causing your site to load much, much slower than it should be loading.  This detracts from your users’ overall experience while on your site.
• Your visitor might have his speakers turned off or his audio on mute.  What’s the point of playing music if this is the case (especially if the music is slowing down your site)?
• Your visitor might be viewing your website at a location where things need to be kept quiet – such as a work cubicle, or their living room at night after the baby has been put to sleep.  These people will assure you that they do NOT appreciate sudden, unexpected noise coming from their computer.
• It may be difficult to believe, but I guarantee you that many, many visitors to your site will really, really dislike your music.

Unless you’re a musician, singer, or band, people likely visit your website to learn more about you, your products, and/or your services. They didn’t come to listen to music that you thought was cool.

If you really, really, really love your music, the very least you can do is give visitors the option to press a Play button if THEY want to listen to that music. And go ahead — track the number of clicks that Play button receives.  You might be surprised at the incredibly high percentage of visitors that pass on the option of playing that funky music.

I recently came across a wonderful article written by Trenton Moss that discussed the importance of credibility in business websites.

Web credibility is all about presenting your business on your website in such a way that you come across as trustworthy and knowledgeable. (And … hopefully you truly are both of those things… Right?)

Making adjustments and updates that result in a more credible website can reap huge rewards for your business, so have a look at Trenton’s five recommendations for making your business website more credible (and therefore more effective):

1. You must prove there’s a real organization behind your website.
2. Your website needs to provide ‘sensitive’ information.
3. All statements and claims should be backed up by third-party evidence.
4. There has to be proof that your organization is growing and has clients.
5. Your website needs to have an air of professionalism and confidence.

If your company has its own website (and I really, really hope it does), I highly recommend you read Trenton’s complete article, which can be found right here: http://tinyurl.com/ybbcy86.

Attention all Summit County business owners! Jason Brewer of SnowHome Properties keeps a regularly updated blog in which he posts news about the people and events in our county.  His blog can be found right here: http://news.snowhome.com.

Here’s the sweet news: he’s currently offering a free blog post to any interested local businesses (other than realtors).

It’s a great win-win situation for everyone involved; Jason gets to add great content and potentially attract more visitors to his blog while you get to have your business featured and seen by all who visit the blog. Several businesses have already taken advantage of Jason’s offer, including Stillpoint Massage and Wellness Center of Frisco, the Qi Gong Institute of Summit County, and the Colorado Workforce Center.

Interested in making your business a featured business? It’s easy and free. Just contact Jason at Jason@SnowHome.com to learn more.

Take a look at the homepage of your company’s website.

Is it possible that you’re overwhelming visitors with massive amounts of information? Are you inducing information-overload comas that turn people away from your site?  A common—yet easily fixed—mistake found on the homepages of many business websites is the presentation of too much information.

When passers-by take a look at the menus posted outside of restaurants when determining whether they’d like to walk in and ask for a table, they’re not interested in learning about the restaurant’s 15 year history, the background of the owner, or the various local events the restaurant sponsors. These people are interested in seeing what food the restaurant serves and, possibly, the costs of the various dishes offered.

What are your potential customers looking for when they arrive at your website? What are the *first pieces* of information they’re looking to find?

Relocate secondary details about your company and services/products to internal pages within your site and, to the best of your abilities, remove extraneous, “fluffy” adjectives and details completely.

Doing so will make your customers and potential customers much happier–and much more likely to spend additional time on the other pages within your site.

The fact that your business website’s copy is good doesn’t guarantee that it will be read. Your copy may be useful, effective, and persuasive when read from start to finish, but it may not be living up to its potential if it doesn’t respect a basic web truth:

For the most part, when reviewing information on the web, people do not read. They skim.

As much as you may love those long, detail-rich paragraphs expounding the wonders of your many qualifications and accomplishments, most people have neither the time nor patience to read through them.

To turn your good text into great text that allows people to first skim through your content, simply chunk it up. Break large paragraphs into smaller, bite-sized portions of content. Use headlines above areas of text to let your visitors know what that text focuses on. Take those long lists of accreditations, clients, or products and arrange them in easy-to-skim-through bulleted lists.

MYour site’s visitors can’t be educated or influenced by all that text you wrote if they never read it. So consider setting aside a small bit of time to review your site’s copy and, if it’s a bit on the wordy side, chunk it up to increase the likelihood of it being read by your site’s visitors.

Sound the trumpets! Clang the bells! Let it be known to all Summit County residents that we have a local telephone company right here in Breckenridge!

Summit Telecom offers three great plans for you to choose from, they donate $1 from each monthly bill to the National Forest Foundation to help replant Summit County forests, and best of all, all their plans include free long distance! I don’t think it gets much better than that. In fact, most companies and businesses that switch to Summit Telecom find they save close to 40% on their phone bills.

In 2002 my company began using Qwest for its phone service. Our monthly phone bills typically fell within the $50 to $60 range—and this did not include long distance service. We’ve since switched to Summit Telecom and, not only do we feel great about supporting a local business, our monthly phone service now costs $39.95 per month—and that includes national long distance service!

Sign up or learn more today. Call Summit Telecom at (970) 776-5882 or visit their website: www.DialSummit.com.

Few business owners would say they want to frustrate their websites’ visitors. Yet many unknowingly do just that by failing to ensure that the links on their sites are consistent and easy to spot.

If the links in your homepage text are underlined and blue, make sure the links in the text throughout the rest of your website are underlined and blue. If you have green buttons in the footer of your website and you’re about to add more footer links, make sure they’re green as well.

Sounds simple. Rudimentary. This tip is so basic that you almost feel insulted I would take the time to suggest it. Fair enough.

Consider, though, the fact that over the past week I counted no less than eight Summit County businesses’ websites in which I encountered confusing, inconsistent link-display problems. I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I click on items that appeared to be links but were not. It was annoying.

So if you get a chance, you just might want to take a quick look at your business’ website. Not that your website would have link-display consistency issues but … well, you know. It doesn’t hurt to look.