Holiday season is the time to relax and unwind, spend time with your family and slow down a bit. However, this is not true for everyone. Many SMB’s are working much harder than usual, having in mind that people are buying Christmas presents all over the place. Most of them are ready to sacrifice their holiday spirit for a Christmas bonus and one would be crazy not to. Since there are many Santa’s helpers working during the holidays, let us focus on them and see how they can capture the attention of all parties interested in their products.
Decorate your UI to attract attention
It may seem silly, but choosing the right template, colors and font for your website is extremely important. Given how eyesight is the most valuable sense, it is no surprise that the appearance of a website is a key factor to the observer’s decision to dig into it. This means that, regardless of how good you are at what you do, your visibility depends largely on your website or social media representation. If you still think that taking care of your UI is ridiculous, hire experts to handle that part of your business as it needs to be taken seriously. On the other hand, if you have the will, it is not an issue to do it yourself. Make sure to educate yourself a bit on the subject and get ready to experiment. It definitely would not hurt if you hired a committee or just a group of friends or colleagues that will vote on some major decisions regarding the aesthetics of your site. This will give you external feedback and help you make final decisions.
Upgrade all media
Since we mentioned UI and making your website pretty, one inevitable part of it all is the presence of all media. The level of urgency of the need for the media on your website to change depends on how long it has been since it was all made. To make it easier, if it has been more than two years, it is time you replace it. Imagine having a gorgeous new website with old photos and videos – well, that’s just wrong. So, since you are already changing all your media, make sure to do it right. That means utilizing everything modern technology offers, high performance cameras, high quality 3D rendering and augmented reality are factors that can turn your whole business around. People love seeing good photos and videos and that is exactly what you are going to give them. Another key part of it all is the quality of taking the photos, this may require someone from your time that dabbles in photography in their spare time or hiring a professional photographer to take all your photos. Whichever option you choose, make sure to do your best because the quality of the media depends on both technology and the people that use it.
What about content?
It is not just about the pretty colors, templates and fonts, when your target has already been lured to look at your shiny website, you need to seal the deal with some quality content. If you have too many empty sentences that give zero information to the audience, chances are you are going to lose them. Moreover, they will probably start resenting your website and your business if they end up reading a whole page without getting anything in return in the sense of information. There is no need to stress about this issue or complicate it – it is your product, therefore, you know all there is to know about it. The only task you have is figuring out what part of that knowledge should be shared with someone reading your website and in how much detail. We can answer one of those questions and the answer is – no details. Aside from the need for information from your potential customer, there is also a need for efficiency – they do not have all day to read a novel you wrote about the product you are selling. They just want to know the gist of it and in the most concise possible way so they could make the decision whether to buy or keep looking.
Devil in the details
There are certain hacks you can use to make your content more digestible for readers. For instance, segmenting your text into paragraphs has a strong psychological and practical effect. Not only that people will get the impression that there is less text to read, but they will be able to skim through it faster as it will be divided into logical thematic parts. That way, a reader can simply skim through the text and know which paragraph they would like to read. In addition, try adding some white space between paragraphs. It has absolutely no real effect apart from deceiving the reader into thinking the text is more tame. Also, highlighting some key words or expressions in the text also helps readers orient better in the sea of words on the website. Be careful not to overdo it, otherwise, it will be a great guide to every visitor. Calls to action are also welcome as they provide additional clarity. It is easier to have a clear theme for each page of the website.
Finally, there are two main sections you can focus on – one is the appearance and the other is the content. Both are equally important when designing or upgrading your website. Moreover, there are a lot of integral parts for both sections that it is practically impossible to cover all of them and there is no way of knowing the hierarchy of importance. Even when you are done, it is never over as there are a million different little things that make everything so much better. There is always room for improvement and it is up to you to figure out which combination of factors will be your winning one.
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