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One of the primary objectives of a well-organized
website, is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is
definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use,
which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to
be visited and its content viewed.
For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to
provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar.
However, most individuals prefer visually captivating designs. It is
undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put him/her self in
other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website
might think, do and react.
1 ) Navigation
As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think.
Situation A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page ), well planned in terms of placement, and design.
Situation B :
Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach
his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement
of the navigation buttons/bar.
In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her
target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and
is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information.
He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular
product information page.
As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also
like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due
to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or
even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links
to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc…[a few more clicks] > product information ).
Analysis :
In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to
the Situation A be more rewarding than a website with characteristics
of Situation B?
2 ) Design
Design, design, design. To put the wonders of a good design into
perspective, imagine a situation when we are purchasing a T-Shirt.
First of all, what do we look at? The design of the T-Shirt, of course.
Well most people do, other than the material factor. But let’s assume
the all other factors are constant, wouldn’t the design or looks,
become the key aspect then?
Putting oneself in another individual’s shoes, as usual. Here are another two situations.
Situation A :
A website with good design and breathtaking graphics. (Good color
schemes with matching theme), pictures. (Optimum resolutions and
relevant) and proper fonts and word sizes.
Situation B :
A website inversely equipped with hideous graphics and pictures in
terms of resolution, quality and relevancy. (Red pictures with a bright
green background) Fonts used were not matching albeit too fanciful.
(Too small, artsy font-types)
Situation A, visitors that enter the website are immediately awestruck
by the design and artwork. The well placed pictures and designs will
somewhat symbolizes the positive nature of the company/website. As we
know, most people DO judge by impression.
As for Situation B, the shabby environment due to severe lack of
creativity and badly taken pictures wouldn’t exactly help in attracting
visitors. Fonts that were hard to be read, let alone comprehended, and mismatching themes in terms of color, isn’t exactly welcoming, is it?
Analysis: Now, the main idea here is to always plan your websites, try
to get other individuals for feedback and perspectives. Each mindset
might differ, but at least you will get room for improvement. Don’t get
me wrong, even a plain website with proper design would generate plenty
of positive implications, but the key idea here is to at least maintain
an impressionable website.
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