Six Things That May Make Your Web Site Problematic for Your Audience

These are obviously my personal web site peeves, but I’m guessing that if they bug me, they bug a lot of other folks, too. All little things, relatively easy to take care of, and things you should keep in mind when doing/re-doing your site.

• It’s Not Easy to Figure Out What You Do: If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 4,960,572 times, web sites that don’t state clearly up front what exactly it is that a company or organization does are putting way too much burden on their audience. I’ll grant a partial exemption here to companies that are so large and complex they can’t explain who they are and what they do in 10 words or less. But for most: there’s no excuse to have someone have to click through all those pages to figure you out - if then. (By the way, here’s a handy tip for figuring out what a company does: read press release or data sheet. Most include some sort of boilerplate at the bottom. This isn’t foolproof, but it usually works. Of course, the average person coming to a web site may not be as tenacious as I am when it comes to the challenge of figuring a company out.)
  
• There’s No Indication of Where You’re Located: I can’t be the only person who really want to know where you’re located. Yes, yes, yes, it’s a big, wide, virtual world we live in, and so many places are virtually virtual these days. But 99.99% of all organizations very likely have some center to their universe, even if it’s just a Post Office box somewhere, and I want to know where that center of the universe is. No, it probably doesn’t make any difference to me - unless I’m placing a phone call to you - whether you’re located in Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine. But it really bugs me if it’s nowhere to be found - not even on your press releases, for crying out loud.
  
• The Print Is Hard to Read: Small, gray type is a real bugbear of mine. Small is fine (within reason). So’s gray. But the combination of small and gray makes some web sites nearly impossible to read. Sure it looks good - maybe - and maybe you don’t really care if no one over 40 can read things. But some of these web sites are barely legible. This goes double for those color schemes that work in the abstract, but not in real life. There’s a reason the black print on white background is the standard, and it’s not just that it’s cheaper to print. It’s easier to read large blocks of text when it’s shown in black (or navy or charcoal or some other dark color) on white. Leave the yellow on red for short bursts of text. Better to throw in stock photo than to have written word that can’t translate into read word.
  
• All Flash Sites: Do you really not want me to be able to easily grab your precious information and tuck it in a file? I do a fair amount of research, and I like to cut and paste information, or print screens to pdf’s, so that I can filter through it all at my leisure. So I really hate that Flash. (I don’t mind a Flash intro, however, if it has the critical “Skip Intro” option.) And while I’m at it, there are some sites where it make sense to have audio first thing: yours probably isn’t one of them. Noises off!
  
• Colossally Long Forms to Fill Out: Yes, I do want to download that data sheet. And, no, I don’t mind surrendering some of my information to get at it, even though I’m very upfront that I’m in marketing and have no budget and no authority - so my information is very seldom going to be useful to you. But when I have to go through pages and pages of company profile, requirements info, budget, etc. just to get a two page data sheet. Grrrrrrr.

Remember: the first thing you want to have your web site do is make it easier for your customers and prospects to find you, and find out about you. Make sure that you’re not leaving any barriers up that might get in their way.

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