Your website…. What is it all about?

To me, it’s very clear – what the website is about. Turned out, I’m in the minority – many visitors to the site are not sure what it’s all about.

It does not matter how nice your website looks or what amazing content it has, if visitors can’t get what it’s all about (at first glance) they are going to feel confused. People don’t like to feel confused and uncertain so they will just leave.

After some people I showed the site to asked me what it’s all about, I had to take a good look at it again.

Yes, it’s talking about this story and there is an image of a book but it also talks about community, benefits and membership. I’m expecting to see the book in all of this but first time visitors… for them the book is but a small detail in the wealth of items on the page. So it gets lost. Marketing wise, it’s a big flop that needs to be fixed.

There is a lesson to learn here and I wanted to share this with you so you can learn from my experience and not make the same mistake.

If we know what the page is all about, we are going to see it. Our brain will look for the details (images, text, etc.) it knows are supposed to be there. Our brain is looking for affirmation, it needs to feel we are in a safe, familiar environment. If we want to do a good job in the design of the page, we need to try and look at it as if we are seeing it for the first time. We need to force ourselves to take it all in and not just focus on what we think is the main theme.

To fix this, we can re-design the whole page, or we can make sure attention of visitors is drawn to the book. Take a look at the altered page and tell me – is it better now? Can you tell what the website is all about?

Another way to improve visitors experience without doing a complete re-design is to use landing pages. We can create new pages that focus on just one aspect of the website. We then send visitors to those pages (depending on the desired exposure) and give them the option to go to the main site to learn more.