Content Marketing is the buzzword of recent years.
Seth Godin, the marketing guru and author of 17 books, once said that, “Content marketing is the only form of marketing left.”
All this culminated to the phrase = Content is King.
Content drives traffic, content drives shares, content makes you famous!
But is it, really?
Who’s the Real King?
When your visitors see your website, you have less than 2 seconds to make an impression.
Ever landed on a page that looked it was from 1997?
You hesitate to continue reading.
You start thinking: Is this website up to date? Is this legit? This guy’s design sucks!
And that’s the answer – design. Web design.
The Data to Back This Up
Elizabeth Sillence, and her team, conducted a study where they asked participants to find websites about hypertension.
Then she asked people to record whether they trusted or distrusted the websites they found, and the reason why.
The result?
The main reason of distrust that was cited by 94% of the participants were DESIGN problems.
Your Design = Trust.
The findings were interesting to say the least. They didn’t just cite surface level reasons like ‘that site is ugly.’
The culprits are much more tangible. There were 10 “Black Holes” of web design.
The 10 “Black Holes” of Web Design
1. Boring web design
(Be interesting, spice it up a little)
2. Site names that are too smart
(Don’t be try to be clever – use “heart attack” instead of “cardiac arrest”)
3. Too many layouts
(Leads to analysis paralysis – fewer options, higher conversions)
4. Navigation problems
(Can people tell what your website is about without your header and tagline?)
5. Pop-up ads
(Opt-in boxes are great, random ads not related to your site… not so much)
6. Too much text
(As in big blocks of text. Try to be more visual – cat videos are a thing for a reason)
7. Slow load times
(No explanation needed here)
8. Poor search functions
(You type Apple and you get Pen Pineapple Apple Pen)
9. Small fonts
(Size 14 all day every day)
10. Corporate look and feel
(Forced-smiles-in-suits feel)
So there you have it. Look through your website and correct the Black Holes pulling away all your profits and boost your trust among visitors.
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