Online Success Blog

Custom Web Design Without Content Is Just A Decoration

Content precedes design. Design without content is decoration. It used to be that you worked on look and feel before you thought about content. But it’s actually very hard to do design without content.

When the Blogger team asked for design templates, it was really hard to create anything appropriate devoid of content. Doug Bowman made a universal template that was minimalist and ended up on 20 million blogs. It was the best solution for the problem of designing where you don’t know the content. But it’s one of the only success solutions to this problem out there, which illustrates how hard it is to design without content.

Faster = better

People don't like to wait, especially online.
If a web page takes too long to load, visitors simply leave and often don't come back.
'Slow' is the biggest frustration on the web.

Load time is directly related to the financial performance of the website.
Amazon noticed a 1% drop in sales for every 0.1 second the site loaded slower. In an AB test, Google raised the number of search results per page from 10 to 30. Load time went up from 0.5 to 0.9 seconds average. The number of search results and ad revenues dropped 20%!

Custom Web Design For ROI: Mobile First

Your website visitors expect websites to work on their mobile phones. In two to three years, mobile support will become standard for any website.

Designing your website for mobile first really helps narrow down what the most important information and goals are for your site. Because of their tiny screen size you have less room to get your message across. The more convenient you make things for your visitors the more they'll buy. Same goes with having a custom web design for mobile.

When people search on mobile it's about searching for something local. For example "Where's the nearest Starbucks" or "Where's the nearest massage therapist". If your mobile site ranks high for these searches then your more likely to get more buyers of your service or product.

Here's some recent statistics about search on mobile:

• 30-50% of mobile search queries are local.
• 53% of mobile searches on Bing have a local intent. ( source)
• According to Google, 33% or one in three queries from smartphones is about where I am. ( source)
• 10-20% of desktop (PC) queries on search engines are local, depending on how strict your definition is.
• Google has stated that “20% of searches on Google are related to location.” Comscore's annual study of local search behavior indicates that 8.3% of desktop search engine queries are local. ( source)
• 70% of PC search tasks are completed in about one week while 70% of mobile users do so in one hour. ( source)
• 25% of queries from Android 2.0 devices use voice search ( source)
• In 2009, about 175 million smartphones were sold worldwide. The market is expected to grow by 90% this year.

Custom Web Design for ROI: Testing Content

Nobody needs to convince you that it’s important to test your web design and your websites interaction with the people who will use it, right? But if that’s all you do, you’re missing out on feedback about the most important part of your site: the content.

Whether the purpose of your site is to convince people to do something, to buy something, or simply to inform, testing only whether they can find information or complete transactions is a missed opportunity: Is the content appropriate for the audience? Can they read and understand what you’ve written?

We break visitors down into two categories. Engineers and the rest. About twenty percent of the population are engineers who need to know every detail and feature about how your product or service works. The other eighty percent only need to know how it will benefit them immediately. It's an emotional decision. They basically look for any one reason not to buy from you. Which could range from your web design not looking professional, to having spelling mistakes in your content.

At inthevine we use our custom content management system to test different elements of the web design and content. But you could also use free tools like Google's website optimizer.

What Content Should I Test?

Remember when testing content you should have a goal in mind for your visitors. This allows you to test the outcome to see which version of what your testing is working best. With that in mind here's some ideas of what to test:

• Headlines
• Calls to action
• Pictures
• Summaries

Get in touch if you'd like some help with getting more ROI out of your website.

The Easiest & Fastest Way To Get Documents Signed

Last month I stumbled upon a new tool called RightSignature. It's a tool that enables you to obtain legally-binding, handdrawn electronic signatures from your customers in minutes. And better yet it works with your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. We've started using it for our custom web design contracts and it cuts out using paper all together! Go check it out and see how it could change your business.