Month: November 2015

“We Never Go Out of Style”
– said no website ever.
(Yes, that was a Taylor Swift pun.)

Technology is changing every day. After you buy a new device, whether that is a phone, computer, or even a watch, a newer one is coming out a month later. And as far as the digital devices change, so do the websites that live in them.

You may be thinking, “Well we just updated our website 3-5 years ago, it still works just fine for us.” But there is a good chance that the “working just fine” website is dated in comparison to your competitor that just did a full-website redesign in 2015. When prospects are visiting your site, for some, this might be a deal breaker.

Keeping up with technology is crucial to your website’s users. The least creative people in the world have the ability to tell the difference between a modern website from an outdated website. They know good User Interface (UI) when they see it – even if they can’t tell you why it’s better/worse.

We have compiled some questions to help make sure that you are not only “keep up with the Joneses,” but also surpassing your competitors.

1. Are your buttons too complex?

Buttons should be strong Calls-to-Actions, but they don’t need to look like 3D lego blocks. Images inside of buttons and additional bells and whistles can distract the user rather than compelling them to click. Keep buttons as simple shapes and bold colors, which makes them less scary to click.

Great Examples:

 

2. Do you love cheesy stock images?

Apparently, so does Vince Vaughn… but your users don’t. They are so staged that they don’t relate to your audience.

Guy pointing at a chart going up?

Intentionally diverse team standing proudly in front of a wheat field?

Woman laughing alone with a salad?

Blech.

Using photography and videos from sites such as stocksy and dissolve help keep your website relatable. They use a modern photography and video style, with people just like you, to create a soft, approachable vibe.

Great Examples:

3. Is there too much copy?

People don’t read websites, they skim and scan for content. It’s a fact. Nowadays, users want it short and sweet.

Here is the secret: users will read your content…if you trick them! Do this by splitting up your content into shorter paragraphs and sprinkling these paragraphs throughout the page, instead of having one large block of 10-12 paragraphs.

You can also make your messaging easier to digest by introducing design elements such as infographics and iconography to visually voice your concepts. Remember: Quality > Quantity.

Great Examples:

4. Do you look smaller than you actually are?

Your website might be communicating to users that you are a 10-20 person startup, when you’ve actually grown into a Fortune 500 company with 500+ employees.

Show credibility by featuring trust indicators such as testimonials from corporate clients, success ratings and company culture. Share details with users visiting your website to give them a better sense of who your company is and what it will be like working with you.

Great Examples:

5. Is your website over designed?

Over-designed websites use too many forms of patterns, textures and strong drop-down shadows. You certainly want to intrigue your users with beautiful design – but there is a fine line between a clean, classy site and feeling like you are walking down the scrapbook aisle at Hobby Lobby.

Less is more. Keeping your UI clean will make it easier to read and take action.

Great Examples:

6. Do you have too many links in your main navigation?

Users want to be told where to go. Giving them too many options can overwhelm them and increase your bounce rate. The sweet spot for your main navigation is usually around 4-5 main links.

Great Examples:

7. Are you using too many colors in your palette?

Establishing a color palette is standard in the branding process. So when it comes to designing your website, those should already be established. You can add subtle secondary colors to the palette specifically for the website, but make sure that it doesn’t turn into a coloring book.

Modernize your website by allowing whitespace and breathing room for your content. Allow white, gray and black to add contrast rather than adding more bold colors.

Great Examples:

8. Are you using comic sans?

I can’t even…

Typography on a website can make a huge difference. It sets the tone, theme and message of a website. If your typography is off, the whole website can be missing the mark. Setting your header, sub-titles and body stylings with the correct spacing, etc. will allow your website to speak strongly to the users in the correct hierarchy.

Conclusion

If you answered yes to some of these questions, it’s probably time to update your site. If you aren’t sure where to start, contact us! We would love to help you update your website and refresh it to better fit your company. We even offer a full UI & UX audit for dissecting your current website – telling you not only why it might be missing the mark, but how to we can help make it better (in the nicest way possible).

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: when designing your website, you should put as much content as you can at the top of the homepage, because it’s the only space that your users will actually pay attention to! But no matter how many so-called “marketing experts” perpetuate the myth of “the fold” in web design, it’s actual relevance is not nearly as strong as you might imagine. So why are we still talking about the concept?

First Things First: What’s The Fold?

If you’re involved in digital marketing, you probably know about the concept of “The Fold,” a former newspaper term that was transferred to websites in the early digital age. The idea is simple: potential readers/visitors will pay most attention to the content they see first. In newspapers, that’s the top half of the title page, while on websites it’s the content on the front page that’s visible without scrolling. It made perfect sense in a world of static, 800×600 pixel websites where the term was clearly defined.

Changing Perspectives in the Mobile Age

Of course, we’re no longer living in a world of static websites. While plenty of credible, often-cited studies suggest the importance of the fold in web design, these studies are decreasing in relevance as we’re moving into a more mobile-focused digital environment.

Last year, mobile internet usage surpassed its desktop counterpart for the first time, and the gap is only expected to widen in the near future. The result has been a dramatic rise in mobile marketing, including to no small part the rapid spread of web design that responds and adjusts itself dynamically based on screen size. In fact, a survey by Google earlier this year showed 82% of respondents are now using responsive design.

You probably know where we’re going with this by now: if a site adjusts itself based on screen size, and if the majority of users are now looking at your site via mobile devices, just where do you think the fold is? The answer is easy: it no longer exists.

But don’t just take our word for it. Plenty of data points to the fact that scrolling beyond the top end of a page is, in fact, more common than “above the fold” supporters believe.  As it turns out, 76% of users use the scroll bar on a website to dive beyond what they initially see. An A/B test by ContentVerve showed that a landing page with the call to action at the bottom of the page outperformed its top-of-page CTA variation by no less than 300%.

To top it off, research now shows that users spend the majority of their time on a website just below the traditional fold.

Designing Websites in a Post-Fold Environment

In other words, the concept of a “fold” in modern web design is hopelessly outdated. Cramming your content into the top part of your homepage, or even designing an entire page without scrolling, is no longer effective. Of course, the top of your homepage still matters for web visitors as their first impression of your site. But everything that comes after matters just as much.

Here are some tips on how you can design your website in a responsive, post-fold world:

• Grab Attention at the Top. Your most compelling visuals and headlines should still live at the top of the page. Done just right, they will draw your visitors toward the additional content at the bottom, where you can spend your time and content convincing them to take action. You may even want to think about specifically encouraging your users to scroll for more information.

• Scatter Your CTAs. Not every visitor behaves similar. Some will come to your website with the specific purpose of filling out a form to get their content, while others need some convincing first. So instead of merely placing your CTAs at the top or the bottom, scatter them around your site to grab visitors at any point within their discovery phase. Dropbox, long a leader and innovator when it comes to landing pages, does a great job of this on its homepage.

• Avoid the “False Fold.” If your visitors think they can glean everything without scrolling, they won’t do so – even if they see a scroll bar. Too many companies seek to present a complete picture of their site, creating clear delineation between the top “attention grabbing” content and its bottom, “convince me” counterpart. But that delineation actually discourages people from ever discovering that content, as they don’t feel the need to scroll. Instead of creating an arbitrary distinction between your top and bottom content, think about using the Gestalt Effect to your advantage by presenting a design that’s clearly incomplete without scrolling.

As we move further into the mobile age, dynamic websites have made the “above the fold” concept become hopelessly outdated. It’s time to start thinking beyond the concept and toward the countless opportunities companies now have to build amazing websites without fear that visitors will only ever see the top part.