“The louder you shout the harder it is for people to hear you.”
Constant attention grabbing and new website components fighting for attention with existing components soon leads to a web page becoming a counterproductive mess.
Customer apathy is the marketer’s nemesis
There is a high street brand (whose name I won’t mention) with stores up and down the country that is in a never ending “Closing down sale”. This closing down sale has been going on for the past 10 years! The windows are full of garish mock hand drawn banners with title such as “Up to 75% off” or “All must stock must go”.
I’ll be honest when I was a teenager it worked on me “Designers shirts for £40 for a limited time only? I best be quick!” But as the years rolled on it has now become a joke between myself and my friends and I no longer go in to the store knowing full well the offer will be there in another 10 years.
In other words, the marketing message became stale and I no longer believed it so I began to filter it out when I walk down the high street and I stopped caring.
It’s not about being loudest, it’s about being noticed
If you believe every element on your site is as important as each other how will you draw people’s eyes to the truly special sections?
One way is to make it louder and more intrusive. But what happens when the next product, service or promotion launches? You could make that stand out even more. OK, but then what do you do the next time…? (You get the idea).
You will see plenty of sites that have just piled colour on top of colour, and images on top of images (“Let’s use a RED star burst this time!” and then 2 months later… “Let’s use a YELLOW star burst this time!”) as they strive for the new addition to make an impact.
If you keep your website clean and simple, even the slightest change or element out of the ordinary can jump out at you. The smallest promotional message on http://www.apple.com will draw your eyes.
Play it cool
If it is true you literally have a second to capture a visitor, logic would suggest you should show them everything you do on one page so they notice something they like. Product boxes here, links over there, a few sprinkles of promotional disturbers scattered around… and after one look at this over loaded garish nightmare the visitor bounces.
Your home page is the gateway to more information not the sales pitch. The aim should be to make it clear what the site is about, demonstrate a strong brand they associate with and make it easy to navigate to where they want to go. Using the http://www.apple.com website as an example again imagine if they tried to put all their product ranges and services on to the home page. Instead they have picked what is important right now along with clear navigation to the main areas for people to follow.
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