Is Your Web Design Worthy?

“Oh my God! Are you ok?!”

“Say something, man!”

My feeble response: “Ow, I think I broke my butt.” 

I am not a skateboarder, but I really like to surf.

So when my friends challenged me to ollie (jump) off a ledge on a skateboard, I foolishly assumed some of my surfing skills would transfer somehow and I would be able to land the trick. 

I was wrong. Very, very wrong. 

I slowly got up from my embarrassing crash landing onto the hard concrete at a skatepark in Azusa, California, not far from Laguna Hills in Orange County. My pride hurt almost as much as my body. It was painfully clear that I was no Tony Hawk. 

But the worst part of it all was how much I hyped up my attempt before actually trying to do it. I didn’t just accept the challenge, I repeatedly BRAGGED about how easy it would be to do. 

I spent so much time talking up a big game to my friends that I never bothered to consider whether I actually knew how to do the trick well enough to be able to pull it off. The attention and hype that I built up prior to my spectacular failure all came to a disappointing climax when it was revealed that I had no idea what I was doing. 

I was not worthy of the attention I had received before my fall. 

This is a lesson that I still think about when I help my clients with web design and Search Engine Optimization. 

You see, a website can rank very high for a given set of terms in a market segment or particular industry, but it’s also important to consider whether there is any way to improve the site itself before it gets all that traffic and attention. 

It’s always a real shame for me to see a site attempt to achieve a high SEO ranking or have an effective Google Ads campaign, only to later lose out to competitors who offer more or have better website design. 

I’ve already talked about the importance of having high quality content in one of my previous blog entries, but there are other very important factors that need to be discussed. 

Want to know how to improve Search Engine Optimization?

Make sure your website is functional and user-friendly! 

Think of it as the preparation phase before show time. After all, if something on the site doesn’t work or visitors can’t find what they are looking for, chances are that they won’t stick around for very long once they get there. 

Look, we all want to be at the top of Google’s search results, but SEO is about more than just getting peoples’ attention. You also want to be able to keep it! 

All of that pay per click money spent will amount to nothing if the website doesn’t facilitate conversions. 

So ask yourself: “How easy is it to navigate through both top-level and deep pages?” 

A navigation system that makes a significant portion of the site hard to access is not user-friendly. 

A well-designed website should make navigation a breeze. Anchor texts should be well-written and users should have a very clear idea of what they’ll get when they click any given link. 

Users must be able to follow design cues to help them comprehend what they are looking at. Hence why graphical elements, layout, separation of unique sections, visibility, and contrast are all very important. 

And it goes without saying that all links, tools, images, and scripts must work as intended and that they don’t provide any errors to alternative operating systems or non-standard web browsers. 

Don’t just assume that everybody is going to use Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge while visiting your site. Many people use other browsers, such as Firefox, and they must be accounted for. 

The good news is that using Squarespace is a great first step to having SEO conscious design and a user-friendly layout. It has a lot of customization options and makes updating content easy.  

Squarespace also supports all of the major browsers. As of the time of writing this, their official website states that they support Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Edge Legacy, and Safari (for all you MacBook fanatics like me). 

In short, custom Squarespace website design facilitates the things that are necessary to make a site user-friendly and functional. 

And when everything comes together and clicks, it’s a thing of beauty! 

So don’t be lame like I was when I almost broke my behind falling off a skateboard.

Keep these guidelines in mind and your website can be like the cool guy at the skatepark gracefully landing tricks instead! 

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