Sometimes, we get so caught up in our own lives that we forget or are blinded about what we project to others, what we see as “Great” or “innovative” on our website are considered to others, one or more of the 7 deadly website sins, so today we are looking to cleanse our websites of sin.
Your website is both an interactive and virtually an unlimited medium, meaning that your own little corner of the internet has huge potential for you. Therefore, don’t settle for anything except the best.
But, how exactly would one define a ‘sinning’ website?
of course it is, Not to worry though – we’re here to get you back on that righteous path!
Let’s review some of the 7 deadly website sin signs, along with some quick and easy Hail Mary’s.
- Ghastly
- Monotonous
- Apathy
- Inadequate
- Misleading
- Pairing
- Plagorism
1. Ghastly.
Colors & images, we all love to see them and with the amazing high definition screens that are currently on the market it makes sense to play it to our advantage. unfortunately this all comes at a huge cost to our sites load times.
Use them sparingly to enhance text or to highlight context to the text, NEVER use an image because you “Just like it” as that would be Ghastly.
The Hail Mary: Colors should enhance a page or highlight a side article, stay away from block colors unless they are fient pastels and ensure your color scheme is uniform throughout your whole site as this plays a part in subliminally telling your client that they are still on your website and have not been redirected elesewhere, be careful of color clashes, to help find a great scheme for your site I use Adobe Color, if you are using a certain image, its a good idea to take a dropper test from the image to pull some of the colors into your site that way colors wont clash with images, I use Image Color Picker
2. Monotonous
A monotonous website will contain no character, it will contain no UX, imagery will be all over the place with no coherent reasoning, there’s no opportunity for interaction, branding will be non consistent and it will display a slap dash approach that will infect your brand
If you are going to do something then give it all you have, your energy and exhuberance for what you do should propagate to the page.
The Hail Mary: Overcoming this sin is relatively easy, it just takes time, patience and research of your subject. Plan your page out on paper first from your goal backwards, bring together all the content that you want your client to know about and display it in a layout on paper, include relevant images to orchestrate the text.
3. Apathy
Your blog hasn’t been updated in months (or years). Apathy has set in and you’re uninterested as it doesnt bring you any new clients anyway, so why bother.
There’s nothing more boring than visiting a website where the “latest” blog post is a few years old. It sends the message that your site isn’t a priority and creates a perception that you don’t have anything interesting to say.
The Hail Mary: Running a business is difficult and free time isn’t always readily available. Finding extra bits of efficiency wherever you can could help free up some time for writing. A good example of this is finding a web host that takes care of mundane tasks such as updating your content management system’s software for you. It’s one less thing you have to worry about and lets you focus on the good stuff.
4. Inadequate
Lets grab a theme and make it my website, I’ll just change some images and text and its done, is that what you thought you could do?
In a very miniscule way, that would work, but the service you provide is unique, so why isn’t your website!
Will that theme elevate your product or service to where you need it to be, the theme will contain certain styling that may need to be changed to be cohesive with your branding, there is no “Gallery” to display your work or products.
The Hail Mary: Shop around, take your time to find a theme that fits your quota, be prepared to make changes to a theme to fit your company, don’t try to fit your company to a theme.
5. Misleading
Outlandish claims of service or products, saying you can deliver something that your competitors can’t and not livin’up to your claims.
Selling subserviant service to what is proclaimed.
The Hail Mary: Let your site reflect you and your business ethos in an open and honest way, be truthful with what you can do and humble with what you can’t.
6. Pairing
Font pairings are all wrong and far too many on one site, think of the Font being the voice of text, some fonts display screamimg, they are loud and vicious looking, so why would you use them to create peaceful tranquility on a YOGA website, nor would you want a fine serif font for an engineering site.
With hundreds of thousands of fonts currently on the market, means you can pick and choose, don’t be scared to experiment but be careful of your choices
The Hail Mary: This amazing website by Lou Levit is a testament to this art of pairing, keep the maximum amount of fonts to 2 or 3, 4 at a push.
7. Plagorism
Dont steal others work, thats downright “LOW” and thats all I have to say on the matter. By all means use someones else’s work if its GPL or you have permission but ALWAYS link back to the author/designer with credit.
The Hail Mary: Create your own work by connecting with your customers, orientate your site towards meeting their needs.
Recovering from SIN
If you have discovered that your website is suffering from one or more of the signs above, know that you are far from alone. Often, it seems like we start off with the best of intentions when it comes to our websites – only to move onto more pressing matters as the years go by. It literally could happen to any one of us.
But, as we’ve found, recovery can become a reality. A few simple steps can turn a site full of sin into something much more interesting. And, if you feel your current site is a lost cause, you can take comfort in knowing how to approach the next one.
Now, take what we have spoken about and use it to ensure that your website lives up to its vast potential. You can do it!
