Top Ten Websites Mistakes Businesses Make #9

Welcome to our informational series from yours truly and Transmutation Sciences.

This series, “The Top Ten Website Mistakes Businesses Make,” is being created as a checklist to which you can apply to your own website and determine whether you need professional help … erm, the professional help of Transmutation Sciences!  In our last installment we focused on the value of keeping your domain name clear, effective and simple.

Art/Technology vs Usability

Love is a many splendid thing … except when it interferes with your website’s usability and purpose.  The ‘love’ I’m referring to is the love of ‘art’ or ‘technology’ as they relate to web development.  Often, love is blind.

Love of Technology. When Flash/Shockwave first came onto the scene it seemed as if everyone wanted a website built in Flash.  Why? Well, it’s friggin cool!  You can have glowing, sliding, moving images and text, fade ins, fade outs, dynamic shapes and actions .. and so much more.  I good friend of mine has an all Flash site – www.foilstudio.com.  He’s an artist, creating incredible pieces of custom furniture and lighting.

Unfortunately, there’s simply not enough “juice” to keep the search engine bots and spiders interested in his site.  They’ve visited and were only able to “see” the home page, which, of course, has no text.  Luckily for Ryan, his Flash programmer knew enough to add some text in the coding of the page so the site has been indexed.

You see, with Flash the search engine bots and spiders only see an “image” – there’s no text on the page to read and catalog, no links to follow, nothing.

Love of Art.  Many web designers come from a background in art … graphic design, illustration, painting … but frequently their “artistic self” the right brain takes precedence over the usability of a site.  In addition, spacial relationships and restrictions, plus the “expectation effect” prohibit much of the “art” of web design.

That is not to say a website can’t be well designed and beautiful but your designer needs to be conscious of the limitations of the internet, the technology, and the end user.  Hard to read text, colored text on colored background, too much Flash, intrusive animation, confusing navigation, and looooong load times. Your website is there for the purpose of supporting your business, either by generating money or generating clients that will bring you money. If it’s not doing that, you are wasting YOUR time and money.

Keep your home page easy to use and as fast loading as possible. Your business website should be clean, bright, informative, and easy for your customer to use. A website is more than computer coding and flashy gimmicks, and way more than just an advertising tool.

If you are concerned about keeping the balance between art, technology and usability for your website call Transmutation Sciences at 971-207-4492 for your FREE internet consultation.

And, don’t forget to return for our final installment – “What’s a Website?”

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