Venturing Beyond the Fold in Web Design, Exploring New Designs
It’s time to have the talk- yes, the talk about scrolling. Everyone does it. You do it. We do it. Your grandmother does it. We all scroll through web pages- especially if we love the content. One of the biggest concerns brands have regarding their website is content exposure. The big question is, “Are visitors scrolling through my website or just glancing above the fold?” Scrolling is Habitual Today, scrolling down web pages is second nature to many computer users. [quote] Apple felt so confident in this statement that they removed the scrollbar from their recent Mac OSX update.[/quote] Scrolling plays a key role across all social media platforms. The 1.82 billion social users prefer to expose themselves to more and more content by scrolling through feeds. Sites that have parallax scrolling features have the cleanest conversions in terms of usability across desktop and mobile platforms. Exploring Below the Fold Back in the golden age of print media, newspapers would be folded in half on newsstands, and the top half was designated for the juiciest news to a grab reader’s attention and the same goes for websites. The information you want your audience to see should be placed at the top of the page, but it is important to follow certain design principles to keep visitors intrigued to keep scrolling for more. Major brand website’s like that of Burberry have less content above the fold to encourage users to venture beyond the fold by use of its alluring hero image. CX Parners notes: “ The screens show two different design treatments for the hero slot on the homepage. The surprising thing we have learnt was that actually having less above the fold (one large content block as opposed to 2 smaller ones) encouraged exploration below the fold.” Less is More Adopting a cleaner and simpler style, such as parallax scrolling, will not only make your website better-looking, but it will also assist in positioning your brand as modern, up-to-date, and innovative. If users visit your site and are curious in the content you have above the fold, they will scroll away. However, to ensure website visitors are doing what you want them to do, be sure to follow design principles including less is more, avoid horizontal lines, and avoid in-page scroll bars. [featured] Looking to optimize your site layout? Let BIGEYE improve your website to be even more user friendly! Contact us today, and we can guide your vision toward success! [/featured]
How Website Optimization Can Help Grow Your Business
Remember the first days of the Internet, when it felt as though every single person had a Geocities page, full flashing graphics and crazy clip art-inspired interfaces? This was in an era when search engine technology was miniscule, which most of us now rely upon. In this day and age, there are many more options for businesses to build impressive web pages. But all the features in the world won’t necessarily make for a better website: the key lies between optimized design and optimized content. The team at our Florida marketing agency is ready to break down ways for business owners to do both – here, BIGEYE brings you a few thoughts regarding web optimization, and how it can help grow your business: Website optimization: Designing a great website requires a calculated mix of graphic design and user experience design. Most companies that have great graphic teams may be lacking in the UX department, meaning that even if a website looks beautiful, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to navigate. One solution to this is to enact user testing on your website, both throughout the development process and periodically after the site launches.[quote]Google Analytics offers powerful tools to help track users’ behaviors once they reach a website.[/quote] A high bounce rate may mean that your Google AdWords strategies are misleading, or that your site takes too long to load. Business owners can also test website functionality by asking about user experience through survey data or even informal questioning. Collecting qualitative and quantitative data as to friction points can help business owners find ways to ease user concerns. Some small businesses note massive increases in conversion to sales after installing quick and easy fixes such as a call to action on the front page or seamless shopping cart functionality. Business owners can also optimize their websites using tools like Optimizely, which helps facilitate A/B testing to see which website designs work best within a given user base. Additionally, data mined using Moz can help boost the SEO ranking of your website through design optimization in accordance with Google’s search algorithm. Content Optimization: Even the most beautifully designed website isn’t going to gain search engine traction if the content isn’t optimized. Website content optimization doesn’t just depend on the actual text on a website, but also is contingent on metadata, tags and a whole host of other facets that content writers can read about at Moz. The number one rule of SEO website optimization is to avoid tactics that seem slimy, such as linkbaiting practices and poor-quality, keyword heavy content. These will seriously damage SEO rankings, and it may take a long time for a domain name to recover after losing rankings due to bad practices. Companies can also improve SEO rankings by blogging. Focusing on a few keywords and posting about relevant topics pertaining to that field can give companies even more opportunities to appear in organic search. Site content is just the start of search engine optimization; Moz and a host of other companies offer packages to help optimize the backend of your website using a variety of tools and facets, many of which are updated frequently to reflect constantly-evolving search engine ranking algorithms. Our Florida ad agency hopes you can use these tools to help optimize your site to get more money for your dollar. While website optimization in some cases may be a large investment, it can have a major payoff when it comes to the bottom line. For more information as to how your business can optimize its website, please contact BIGEYE’s Florida advertising agency.