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Don’t put obstacles between your reader and your message!

September 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When people arrive on your website they are looking for something.  If you want to keep them on your site you need to deliver what they want – fast.

These are the things that you need to avoid:

  • A splash (entry) page that shows off how clever your designer is, but annoys the visitor as they have to find a way past it to find out if you’ve got what they want.
  • A weak (or absent) headline.  I know I’m welcome on your website or you wouldn’t have one so use that headline to engage your reader, not to say nice, but ineffective things.
  • Too many things going on.  The patchwork quilt effect won’t keep your visitor long, if there are too many options they don’t know where to start and some of them will simply hit the ‘back’ button.  You need one dominant point of focus.
  • Whizzy images moving about or changing.  Images are important, but they don’t deliver your message on their own.  If every time your visitor tries to read something their eye is distracted by another changing picture, they’ll get irritated and leave.  Get your web people to slow image changes down to a very gentle ‘dissolve’.
  • Forms to fill in, search boxes, log ins that are NOT where it’s easy for your reader to take action.  The best place is on the right, just under your brand banner; more people complete forms here than in any other position on the site.
  • More than one menu – don’t confuse people.  You should have one menu right where people expect it to be, which is either vertically on the left or horizontally under the brand banner.  If your menu is above this some people will not see it and it vanishes as soon as the user scrolls down the page.
  • Content (copy) that is about you and what you do.  It should be about the reader and what they want and be full of benefits, not simply nice-to-have information.  Copy on your home page should not be about your background and experience; let the reader find out that you’ve got what they want first, they’ll go and look at your about page when they are sure you’re worth checking out.

If you have a commercial website (i.e. one that aims to get people ready to buy from you) why would you make it hard for them to do so?

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Filed Under: Readability, Website copy Tagged With: , , ,

Getting fonts to work for you

August 22, 2011 By 2 Comments

I was just watching a funny video about PowerPoint by Don McMillan and his comments about fonts reminded me of how much impact the font you choose has on your message.

I used to create newsletters for Ford (the motor company) and the research and development site chose Helvetica Neue as their font.  This is a nice clean, easy to read font, modern and yet not gimmicky.  The older site where they had lots of old-fashioned equipment and 1950′s style offices chose Times for their newsletter, creating a conservative, more reserved look and feel to the newsletter.  We actually showed them the front page in several different fonts so they could see what it would look like and that was how they saw themselves.

People think fonts are simply decorative, but they reflect the personality of the company they represent.  Sometimes an attempt to be ‘different’ and not use the boring old fonts everyone else uses results in a disaster.

I’ve seen web pages created using ‘Forte’ (a bold script) in an effort to look like handwriting.  Worse still, it was in white writing on a dark beige background – all that happened was it made it really tough to read.

I found a web page that was in a font that I couldn’t read at all as all the letters were placed unevenly.  I love unusual fonts, but they aren’t intended for body copy.  The occasional headline or title, yes, but not anywhere you want people to actually get your message without having to work hard.

There’s fonts that are all capitals (like Copperplate Gothic) and look nice and clear, until you consider that the letters are all the same height.  Words in sentence case have a shape and most people read the shape of the word,  words all in capitals are little blocks with no real shape, so most readers will have to slow their reading rate in order to understand.

The web is more sophisticated than it used to be, but there are still websites where a fancy font defaults to Courier (which looks like an old fashioned typewriter font).  On the web fonts that have a serif (that little line at the top and bottom of the letter) are less clear on the screen as the extra lines test the screen resolution and, consequently, tend to look slightly fuzzy.

The moral of this tale is stick to a sans serif font like Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet or Verdana and keep your message sharp and crystal clear!

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Filed Under: Readability, Website copy Tagged With: ,

Colours on your website

May 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I’ve just read a blog about using colour on your website and, whilst I understand that different colours convey different feelings and also have varying ethnic impacts, there was a lot missing! These are my thoughts on websites and colour – all focused on getting the reader to engage with your message and take action!

From a design point of view it’s important that the colours on the website reflect those of the company’s corporate image. Even if the company is a small business or sole trader their brand must be reflected on the website.

Less is more! Yes, it’s a cliche, but it’s so true. Unless you’ve got a very talented designer who knows how to control many colours, stick to one or two and use different tones of each to create additional interest.

Don’t have two colours in similar tones next to each other – they’ll just ‘argue’ and cause the reader to get a headache and squint!

Whilst dark backgrounds with light writing can look ‘sexy’, it’s much harder to read than dark writing on a lighter background.

  • Firstly, your eyes focus on the darkest colour so you’re looking through the copy; it may be infinitesimal, but it’s enough to give the writing a fuzzy look.
  • Secondly, normal 10 or 12 point text cuts the dark background up and creates a ‘dazzle’ effect. This means that your brain is working so hard trying to see the letters that there’s less concentration on the actual message.
  • Thirdly, squinting at the copy when it’s on a darker background is just hard work and most people won’t bother for long unless there is a compelling reason why they should – and, with the best will in the world, your website is unlikely to fall into that category!

    • This doesn’t mean that coloured backgrounds are bad – it just means that they should either be pale in colour so dark text shows up clearly, or that the text area is light. A website that is all dark can be too ‘heavy’ and can overpower the reader in any case.

    Colour for links is good as people need to be able to spot a link so use coloured text for anything that’s a link – it can be the traditional electric blue (at least everyone knows what that is) or a colour that coordinates with your website – but should always be underlined. People recognise that underlines = links (so don’t underline anything that isn’t). Bold doesn’t necessarily mean a link and people tend not to be running their mouse around the screen looking for things that are hidden under an image or piece of text. Most of us take the mouse to the right onto the scroll bar ready to scroll down, or up.

    Work with your web designer so that a stunning design works with the words and keeps the reader engaged and ready to take action!
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    Filed Under: Readability Tagged With: , ,
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