Posted 1 year ago (March 11, 2011 at 12:00 AM) in Design, Strategy
If change is good, and beautiful websites are better, then beautiful websites that engage your customers in a professional and memorable way are the best...unless you’re creating the memory that your company’s professional website was built around the same time that man invented the first square version of the wheel.
There used to be a time when just having a website made your company seem technologically advanced, but if you haven’t taken the time to assess and update your website lately, you may be thumping along on your square corners while your competition rolls by, swift and smooth. Here are 11 signs that your website is stuck in prehistoric times:
The copyright date hasn’t been updated since 2007. Seemingly small details, like the copyright date or the date of the last blog post are sure signs of life to others visiting your website. If you haven’t taken time to update your copyright or blog, you could be sending the message that your company has nothing new to offer. Some people will even assume your business has closed. If you’ve just stopped using your blog and have no intentions to start it up again, you may want to consider removing it entirely from your site to avoid falling into the stale information category.
You’re still using an animated logos and graphics. Creating animation and movement on computers was so cool in the late 80s and early 90s. We couldn’t believe that something on a screen could move and interact with us, but as technology continued to develop and quality got increasingly better, great design has replaced the need for animation. If yours hasn’t yet, you may be losing customers. The attention your animations draw now is saying loud and clear that you’re not up to date on business and technology trends.
You’re still using flash as the main backbone of your site. Flash can create some really impressive effects, but some of the less impressive elements of flash include the inability for your site information to be indexed and found in search results as well as difficulty for user navigation. If your site is still in flash, it probably means your company is not easily found in search engines by your customer base. You could be missing out on over 80% of your market-share!
The last time a designer touched your site Internet Explorer was still the popular browser. Internet Explorer used to be the standard choice of browser window...until Safari, Firefox and a few others blew it out of the water with technology, interfaces, and browsing capabilities. Chances are if your site was designed for Internet Explorer, it may display poorly on most other browsers.
You’ve never even thought about designing for multiple browsers, let alone multiple devices. Okay, so maybe the last one was a little bit of a shocker - you’ve been using Internet Explorer since you first signed on to the internet in 1993 afterall. Well, dear IE devotee, the internet has made its way to myriad other devices - iPhones, iPads, Androids, Blackberries. Now may be the time to jump on board designing for mobile viewing before your website becomes petrified in rock and dug up a million years from now.
You thought using sound elements was cute and cool in 1998, but haven’t updated your site since then. The frontier of web design and development was so young, new, and full of possibility way back in the 1990s. The “zing” and “pow” and “cha-ching” sounds really drove the message home that your product was the “it” thing and could make lots of “cha-ching” for others, too. But nowadays, with our constant connectivity to a screen of some sort, getting accosted by involuntary sound makes your visitors want to run and hide before they even learn what you’re about.
You got rid of your dial up connection a long time ago, but your website still loads like it’s on dial up. Blame it on a society of consumers used to instant gratification, but if I can’t see your website after a few short seconds, I won’t be interested enough to stay. I’ll take my business over to the website that wants to engage me as quickly as they possibly can. This is especially important for mobile devices!
Involuntary pop-ups ads seemed like a great way to get your users’ attention a few years ago. I know it’s happened to you - you’ve clicked a link, and 2, 3, 5 smaller boxes have popped up in front of the page you actually wanted to view. Unless you’ve got malware on your computer that’s causing this to happen (you might want to get that checked out, dude...), your ever-so-trusted website made the decision to allow this to happen. They figured you’d be interested enough in their product or service that not even ridiculous inconveniences would keep you away from purchasing...those jerks.
Your site is crammed onto the left side of your screen with a big wide expanse on the right side. Maybe you were adhering to AP standards when you approved this design. Maybe you felt like a big wide expanse to the side of your message felt like a metaphor for opportunity. Maybe it’s a reference to your political leanings. Whatever was going on when a left-aligned design made into your repertoire of company-messaging, the time has come to meet your customers in the middle.
You have no idea how to get around your site or find information you know is on there...somewhere. You know that you wrote a page addressing the nuances of using your product at some time. You thought the information was valuable to write it, but now you can’t find it on your website. Whether it’s just bad navigation or a complete lack of navigation, one of the greatest things you can do for your web audience is make it easy to get to all the information about your company.
The drab and lifeless colors of the 90s are still the main color scheme of your website. So maybe teal, pink, or yellow wouldn’t ever suit your engineering company, but the boxy and uninspired use of web colors that was prevalent in early web design does little to engage your audience and a lot to tell them you’re stuck in the prehistoric ages of the internet. Numerous studies catalogue how colors make your potential customers feel, and if they don’t feel like they can trust in or engage with your company, you may not be making a great first impression or any impression at all.
The great news is, no matter how many of these internet sins you’re living with, you can still bounce back! Everyone loves a good come back, especially if change is for the better. Let us bring you into the present and set you up for a bright future of first impressions.