There is so much the internet can teach us about web design. You can find hundreds of articles, written by hundreds of bloggers, each useful and educational in its own way. We note these tips down, we extract the lessons, and hopefully we apply them when we’re designing websites. But have you ever thought beyond that?
Have anyone ever considered what we can learn not about web design but from web design? As marketers and designers, we know how to use web design principles to increase conversion rates, nurture leads, promote and sell our products. But have you ever considered how to use these same principles to make our life better?
Today, I won’t give you tips about making a better website. Today I’ll show you how these same web design tips can help you in your day-to-day life.
1. Form is Useless Without Function
Consider this: you’re looking at the most beautiful website you’ve ever seen. A website so gorgeous, your eyes are watering. The images, the typography, the colors take your breath away. After 15 minutes of visual euphoria, I ask you “so what does this company do anyway?”. You find that you can’t answer my question, because nowhere in this gorgeous layout do they have a value proposition. They don’t have a next logical step in the form of a call-to-action. You can’t even find the Services button to see what they have to offer. All you know is that they have a beautiful website.
You are the company. You can spend hours every day matching your lipstick to your nails, brushing the dust off your 100+ ties, fluffing your hair and your ego, then go out expecting the world to love you because you’re beautiful. I’ve found that the world would love you a lot more if you’re functional. Become an active member in your community. Help those around you in the small things you could do. Recycle. Paint. Write a book. Contribute whatever you can to the world and become functional. I’m not saying ignore your beauty, I’m saying spend as much time being functional as you do being beautiful.
2. Spend Your Money Wisely
Flash animations are very attractive. We love to use them as intro videos to our websites. They’re cool and we can do so much with them. They cost more to make, and if the animation is really good, they might cost a lot to make. But we tell ourselves that they’re worth it. They’ll attract people; meaning more customers.
While it’s true that they’re more attractive, but they have more cons that pros. Firstly, search engines cannot crawl flash videos, which means that Google and Yahoo and Bing will have a harder time crawling and indexing your website. This means that it will be much harder for you to rank well in the search engine page results. Second, they make your website bigger, which means it will take a longer time to load. Internet users are used to receiving information fast so they usually favor websites that load faster. If your website is slightly slow, they will discard it and move to something else. And third, they won’t open in any Apple mobile device.
Hi, my name is Lynn Sharafeddine and I love buying things. A few years back, I was a spender. I bought items left and right, thinking I absolutely needed to have them because they’re cool/attractive/the latest trend. Of course, I was wrong and as it turned out I didn’t need any of those things. They just ended up cluttering my room, gathering dust. Before you think about buying something, ask yourself an important question: “Does this add value to my life?” If it’s something you essentially need, then go for it. But if you’re just getting it because it’s cool, you’re better off saving your money for something more important.
3. Adapt to New Circumstances
Smartphones and tablets made surfing the internet a lot easier for everybody, but it made our jobs a lot harder. Mobile technology means we have to make our websites fit into the new formats. Now instead of just designing one website to fit the desktop format, we have to design another one for mobile devices (or at least reformat our website to become responsive). If we don’t adapt to this change, we risk losing a lot of potential customers.
At some point in everyone’s life, there will come a change. A big change, a small change, a good change, a bad change. A change will definitely come. How we deal with that can either make us stronger, or break us down. It’s important that we accept whatever comes our way and find solutions to adapt to it. If we don’t do adapt, we risk losing ourselves.
4. Share Your Knowledge With the World
As inbound marketers, we know how vastly important blogs are. They are a medium for us to share our insight and expertise in our domain. We tell people how to solve a problem they have. We share with them the latest news in our industry. By doing this, we gain their trust and loyalty as customers because they can see that we truly care about their problem. Not to mention the huge plus we get in search engine rankings because search engines love fresh content.
You might have a specialty. Cooking, writing, mountain climbing, programming, etc., something you are truly passionate about. Don’t keep it to yourself, share it with the world. Give workshops or classes for anyone interested. Open up shop to promote your products and services. Mentor younger people interested in going pro. There is so much you could do to put your gift out there! In the process, you will gain people’s trust and friendship. Who knows, your talent might take off and turn into a lucrative business!
