With so many people using the Internet today from shopping to banking, research to just killing time at their hourly 8-5 cubicle job in that big glass building you G.E.D. types have, we are all inundated with new website designs and layouts.
Just as the term “banner blindness” was coined because web page elements that are shown too often are ignored – so is your website if it’s a template or a default CMS theme.
Your site may contain excellent content and provide great resources, but if it looks at first glance just like the site I clicked away from with horrible content and was written by a 10 year old dyslexic with severe ADD, what good is it? Your site won’t get a second glace – a second chance.
Face it, the web user base is growing more sophisticated all the time and we have become blind to the default themes and templates – even if we don’t recognize them to be that.
Web designers seem to be responding, usability and uniformity is getting better but generic and boring is a killer. Showing your user the same thing they see every day is boring. How can you brand your product or service – brand your company if visitors can’t distinguish it from a toy maker or a viagra site? They can’t! They won’t remember you, I promise.
The use of a template or default CMS theme is never used with the intention of boring the users, it’s the result of incapable designers, coat-tail seo’s and lazy web firms. The sale to clients on “simplicity” regurgitated by tag-alongs without creativity or any market research is just that – a simple sale.
Make us believe you’re as sophisticated as we are, otherwise we’ll find someone who is.
First page placement in a search engine means nothing if your visitors don’t go beyond the first page of your site.
Now, you “usability experts” will say no one searches the web for “pretty websites” and you are right. But – disable media loading in your browser and see how long you’re engaged with any site, tell me later what brands stuck out.
Can a site be brought back after the fall?
Yes, unless you are under heavy penalty from spamming or something like that. I’ll have an article about it soon, as well as how to overcome the problem – in most cases.