Creating a More Captivating Web Presence

Creating a More Captivating Web Presence As the New Year approaches we all want to optimise our chances of success, and one of the most important for the majority of creative ventures is that of having a captivating web presence.  Notice, the term “presence” rather than website, as in today’s world, the majority of the ways in which we interact are via social media rather than static websites. Furthermore, with advances in aspects such as AI and gartner master data management, we are becoming more empowered to deliver tailored and automated services that are much more relevant to the individual user. Whilst social media is huge, and ever expanding, your website acts as a positioning platform and the base of your digital triangle.  Yes, you can use a variety of interesting platforms to tour your creative wares (e.g. Etsy) yet your website is the hub that everything links back to. In this article, we’re therefore going to look at how to create a more captivating website: SPEED The back end of a website, meaning the technology and code that delivers the content and design onto a computer screen are of critical importance to the performance of your website, yet they are often overlooked.  The key metric, when it comes down to the back end is that of speed and efficiency. See, you can have the most beautifully crafted website, yet if it’s slow to load most people aren’t going to stick around to see it.  In fact, research demonstrates that you have roughly three seconds for your entire site to load before people click off. Of course, with the introduction of 5G coming in 2019, slow internet speeds are in the mostpart becoming a thing of the past, yet, there are still plenty of people in rural communities that don’t have access to lightning fast broadband.     It’s therefore worth considering how quickly your website loads, as speed will captivate a lot more users, on the basis they cannot engage with something that they have to wait to load.  CONTENT ARCHITECTURE If we think of web design as akin to building a house, the architect draws up the plans to ensure your house is functional and convenient for instance, they are likely to build a walk in wardrobe in the master bedroom rather than the downstairs toilet, as it just makes more sense.     Similarly, when it comes to content architecture you need to make sure that everything is laid out in a sensical way that makes it easy for users to find what they are looking for.  AESTHETICS Staying with the metaphor of building a house, the design of your website extends beyond the paint and wallpaper you choose it has to be functional just as much as it has to be attractive. When it comes to your website, you want to ensure you don’t have a distracting design that detracts from your content.  You want your content to be the primary focus where the design aspects around the content are there to compliment it.