The goal of every website is to have the visitors respond… by making a purchase, learning new information, acquiring a service, or spreading a message. Even though the ultimate goal is a positive response, all too often, websites find themselves repeating the same core mistakes and sending their visitors elsewhere.
When you’re creating or using a responsive theme, there are a few things that you should really avoid to ensure that you have happy visitors that stay on your site:
- Too much is too much. The whole point of using responsive themes is to give your user the best experience possible on whichever device they choose to access you. People can be pretty easily turned off from your website if they have to spend tons of time scrolling and scrolling to get to the information they’re looking for. In the end, too much is just too much. You may be tempted to tell people all about yourself on one long page, but if you’re not considering the viewer, you’re losing out on views. Since many of your readers will be viewing your information on smartphones and tablets these days, stick to shorter pages, and keep the most relevant information at the top of the page. If you have tons to tout about, break your information up into several pages that are clearly labeled and easy to navigate.
- Being too salesy is a turnoff. Put yourself in the place of your viewers. Do you like being overwhelmed with more advertisements than the content that you’re searching for? Chances are, you answered ‘no’. Your audience isn’t any more adoring to bombarding advertisements than you are. When you’re designing your responsive themed website, try to avoid the dollar signs that can come from insane amounts of advertisements, and be good to your customers. A good balance between your own content and advertisements will keep the overly salesy stuff out of the picture and create good rapport with your audience.
- Navigating without a map will get you lost. This is just as true in road trips as it is in the web world. When you create your website, keep navigation at the top of your mind. This may be the single most important part of your site, and some would argue that poor navigation trumps any great content because your potential audience will just simply run away if they can’t figure out where they’re supposed to go. When it comes to the navigation of your website, make sure that all of your pages are clearly labeled and that intuitive placement of words and links are imbedded in the foundation of the site itself.
- Old news is no news. If you’re not updating your website frequently, you’re losing out on a potential audience that you may not even realize exists. People can smell outdated material a mile away, so it’s your job to make sure that your web content is constantly updated and current. As our OSO Web Studio clients have learned, switching to a responsive theme can make making updates much easier, and you can get all that you need to get updated in one or two changes. The hard part comes in making sure that you actually take the time to make these changes. After all, old news is no news at all, and if your audience finds that you have outdated information, they’ll probably just click on to the next site, which may end up being your biggest competitor.
Optimum Online Systems clients are always interested in hearing what others have to say. If you have other mistakes to avoid when creating (or using) a responsive theme, feel free to talk about them in the section below!
