Do Or Don't? Things to Remember When Building Your Website!

We all want our websites to perform well and actually be a useful tool for your clients and visitors to navigate and find what they are looking for quickly and seamlessy. Here are a few basic rules to help you along the way.

DON’T over-complicate your header navigation

Most websites have the same sets of links in the header, AND there’s a reason!

Your header really should be the top 3-5 things you want people to do on your website, and ONLY link to those places in your header. More than that, and your viewers are less likely to make a decision on what to click, making them more likely to just leave. You can put other links in your footer, but don’t bulk up your header nav with things like FAQs.

Map out your customer’s journey, so it’ll be easy to prioritize what links to put here and where to put the rest that are not as important.

DO use multiple CTA buttons

Call to Action buttons (CTAs) are quick actions, like “Book a call,” “Add to Cart,” or “Work with me.”

Don’t feel bad about putting at least 3 of the same CTA on any given page, so long as it’s not so short the viewer doesn’t have to scroll down at all.

It can sometimes FEEL redundant, pushy or sleezy, but it’s not a bad thing, in fact, you sometimes NEED to repeat yourself in order to encourage people to take action. Ask for the sale multiple times in multiple ways and make it as easy as possible for the viewer to make a decision to buy from or work with you.

If you have 1 CTA at the bottom of a page and the viewer doesn’t get that far… you lose the enquiry.
If you have 2 CTAs: 1 near the top and 1 near the bottom, and the viewer passes the 1st because they aren’t yet ready to buy yet and don’t see another one before they get to the end & assume they don’t need to keep reading, you could STILL lose the sale if they forgot there was a button at the top.

On sales pages, whether for services, courses, memberships, etc. there is nearly always a single button on each section, all the way down the page, and they all ask you to do ONE thing.

DON’T talk too much

People just don’t like to read. There are those where an exception applies, but generally, this is true. Shorten your shit! Stop over communicating, it’s hard, I know but we aren’t writing a novel here.

Write the copy for your page, then cut it in half. Then cut it in half again.
You can cut fluff words to save space try “use” instead of “utilise”.
Don’t use excessive adverbs and adjectives unnecessarily.
I know that sounds bad, but trust me an 8th-grade level is simple and always better!
Keep your text in bite-size pieces, shorten paragraphs and break it up visually with bullets, headers, images, icons, or whatever rocks your boat.

If you write one 2,000 word paragraph and stick it on your About page, no matter how encouraging, engaging, or incredible your story may be, you’ll be lucky if even 1 person reads it. Seriously!! Break it up, and make it interesting!

DO choose fonts that are easy-to-read

Excessively stylized scripted or display fonts for paragraph text is just way too hard to decipher! Try switching your paragraph font to a fancy font? Your copy would be SO hard to read and you really need to use a much larger font size than printed fonts!

That said, it’s important to pick something that’s still easily readable. While I love the occassional cursive, they are just not readable, so I don’t use it often, and NEVER in long headings or paragraphs.

DON’T forget the importance of your words!

A popular saying in our space “Copy is king” and like everything else in this list, it’s “king” for a reason.

YOUR WORDS MATTER! Choose them carefully. How you say something on your site can be the difference between cringe and calm.

Over analyse everything.

Read it out loud! Ask others to do so as well, how does your copy make them feel? People buy for emotional reasons as much, or more) than NEED or any other reason. You need to trigger that key emotion to have buyers lining up.

You won’t know what to say right out of the gate, so you have to ask, test, A/B test, survey, do market research, whatever it takes, to find out what resonates and impacts your customers.

Keep a list of copy that resonates with you or your brand’s vibe, so you have a list of phrases to pull from when you need it, for email subject lines, one-liners, headers, or cool CTAs.

DO check how your site displays on mobile

My audience primarily uses my website on a desktop or laptop, but how do I know? I check! For both myself and my clients I want to ensure the sites look great on the device size their audience uses most.

A lot of weird layout adjustments occur on different devices, text that becomes too small on Image Layouts, unreadable headers, and a myriad of other visual problems that are fixable and that could also be sending your viewers to someone else if not checked.

Check multiple devices, tablets, phones and desktop screen sizes if you can.

DON’T distract your visitors

Your website’s visitors need help focusing on your content and the value you provide. Don’t give them tons of reasons to look elsewhere, whether it’s a pretty sidebar, widget, external links, ads or too many animations.

Help them focus on what you’re offering and how it will solve their problem(s).

DO make sure your site loads quickly

The number one reason newbies have slow load times is that their image files are too large. It’s a dead giveaway!

There are a few resources you can use to resize your images online for free, such as TinyJPG.

You can also check your page load speed with Google’s PageSpeed Insights over here.

Another thing that makes your site load too slowly is the use of unnecessary custom code, especially if you’re not a developer.

DON’T undervalue good visual content

Visitors want to see who’s behind the brand. Put your face on your website if you feel comfortable with that and make sure you have a lot of good ‘stock’ or custom-branded photography to choose from and use throughout your site.

There are tons of great resources for free or affordable quality stock photos, graphics, illustrations and videos, such as Unsplash (via Wix media library), Freepik or Wix’s own extensive library.