Mixed Messages

by Angie Macdonald

My friend Andrea * asked my advice recently. She is in the process of setting up a new business offering personal development workshops and wanted my input on her website design. As she explained her vision for the business and showed me the mock-ups of the website, I could see some common pitfalls that would detract from her great business idea, if left untreated.

Focus on one idea
The first problem was that Andrea was trying to do too much. She had so many ideas for the new business, including selling beauty products and a range of organic health drinks, but they didn’t all fit with the main purpose of the business, i.e. the workshops. She needed to focus. If those other business ideas were going to be developed further they needed their own websites, separate from that of the core business.

Think in the box
People find it very difficult to deal with more than one idea at a time. Think about Hollywood actor Ethan Hawke and musician Nick Cave who have both published critically acclaimed novels. Do you ever see them referred to as writers? No, because we already know them as an actor and a musician and their secondary careers confuse us. As humans we like to categorise things, put people into boxes, and this is what people are going to be doing when they visit your business website. Don’t confuse your visitors by offering too many different things.

Don’t litter
Secondly, Andrea had too many navigation buttons littering her home page. Some of these could be reduced and others deleted. For example instead of having a separate navigation button for the history of the business and another for the staff photos and biographies, a single About Us button could link to both. A perfect example of this is the Innocent Drinks site, one of my favourite business websites.

Keep things on a need to know basis
In her enthusiasm to put as much information as possible about the new business online, Andrea had blurred the boundary between information that is important to a website visitor and the internal information for her team working in the business. Think carefully before you include things like your Mission Statement or your company’s goals. Your business website should always be focused on your target audience and their needs.

Mind your language
And finally, the most crucial piece of advice I gave Andrea was to watch her language. People come to a website because they are looking for information. And they find that information by READING!

Keep the language simple and user-friendly. Put the thesaurus aside and leave out the jargon. Language like that is distancing and can be annoying. Speak directly to your visitors and view your site through their eyes. That means plain English, a friendly conversational tone and a chance to engage with your potential clients or customers.

What visitors read on your site is the most important part of the whole experience. If the words on the site draw them in, speak to them, and help them find what they’re looking for easily, then they’re going to reward you by coming back for more.

~~~~~~~~~~~

*Name and details changed for privacy

Photo: Thanks to Mash Down Babylon from Flickr.com