Using 10 years of design experience to help handmade businesses build websites into business assets.
First impressions matter
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Customers will leave a site in 3-5 seconds if they don’t find what they’re looking for. (This also includes loading time, so be careful!) You can use tools like BrowserStack to test your site in many different sizes without needing individual devices. Check your analytics to see which sizes your customers use most and then test your pages against those sizes first. What does a customer first see when opening up one of the pages you use in your marketing? Are they able to see your product clearly or do they have to scroll to even get a glimpse? Based on your findings and customer behavior, you may find yourself with a less-than-stellar experience. Thankfully, this can be an easy fix. Prioritize the most popular size and optimize the page templates so that your customers find the most important information first so they don’t immediately hit the back button. New customers will be happy that their search might be over and returning customers will be delighted to have all of the most important information right away. Frodo knows what it feels like to catch a mistake without knowing how long it's been live. Have a great day! |
Ed, Cagebreakers Creative
Using 10 years of design experience to help handmade businesses build websites into business assets.
Internet customers have very little patience. If they don’t find what they’re looking for at first glance, they will leave. You can help yourself by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. 1. Look at your analytics. Somewhere you should be able to see a list of the most popular sizes (mobile and desktop) people are using to look at your website. 2. Choose the most popular sizes and look at your site in that size. Note: You don’t really need precise sizes, but knowing most of your customers...
I went to Boston earlier this year and went on several tours. There was one in particular that stuck with me. The tour guide was endlessly knowledgeable, charming, and funny. His business was also new. I went to leave a review on his website and the link was broken. When I went to contact him, the contact form was also broken. Most people aren’t motivated enough to try again. Once they hit a single issue, most customers will leave. One easy way to prevent this is to test your own site. (It...
Barry the mascot for Serious Business company. Meet Barry. (All names have been changed for privacy reasons.) Barry was the mascot for Serious Business. Serious Business helped smaller companies run their business. Barry was everywhere. He announced sales in emails, appeared on every page of the site, and was in a decent chunk of the printed catalog. Employees even had Barry-sonas. A lot of time, energy, money, and love was spent on making Barry happen. There was a problem, though: Barry was...