If you ask someone for their opinion on the most beautiful website they have ever seen, you might not hear names like Amazon, Google, or your local hair salon. These successful websites all apply different tests for functionality such number of sales, minutes active on the site, number of appointments, and overall profits. Those elaborate metrics don’t test for taste. Fast, easy to navigate, accessible, and more often come long before a sense of aesthetics.
The careers of Faber Birren and Louis Cheskin show how the use of color, form, and shape can become critical elements for business. The DuPont Safety Codes which established yellow for hazard, red for fire protection, and orange for dangerous equipment are standard to this day. Other notable examples include Faber Birren advising meat packers to use a specific shade of blue-green to improve the color contrast of their meat. Louis Cheskin did the same type of work for margarine proving again that color can be critical to businesses. After adding a natural yellow color, sales improved and people preferred the ‘taste’ of the dyed margarine. The result of the packaging and product color change was an increase in sales without significant investment.
By relying on unit tests and chasing certain metrics, a business may be leaving considerable value on the table in terms of lost sales or even business reputation. The example provided by Lay’s chips gives us a clue. Lays’ found that 42% of their customers didn’t know their chips were made from potatoes. What would happen to your business if nearly half of your customers misunderstood your product due to design, colors, or presentation? Another example comes from a blogger who identified a bug that only impacts left handed users. These silent issues with design can seem like an afterthought, but turn into real problems for businesses.
Beauty in the Eye of the Search Spider (and Humans Too)
The decision can be as simple as “What color should the background of the website be?” leading to debates across the internet as old as time: Light mode vs Dark mode. Some websites have found it better to offer users an option of either through CSS or other design tweaks for a slight engineering cost. The decision to offer this often comes from a different source than unit tests: direct customer feedback. This can take many forms from a dedicated email address listed at the bottom of the Contact Us page to a form option in an interactive customer relations flow. The result it the same. Customers inform the choices directly allowing you to fill in the gaps you miss.
“Even if customers complain, it’s fine if it works” can be a mistake that some small business owners make. Search engine spiders like fresh pages checking for updates and pushing them towards the top. They will downrank previously popular pages that have gone without updates in favor of fresh newer pages. This can be a problem for local business websites that publish and watch their traffic slowly fall unable to see why. Fresh content is key and updating pages helps keep search spiders happy. A new design, new details sprinkled into content, and more helps keep your website at the top. Customer feedback is a good place to start.
As Lays’ found out, customer impressions can vary widely. Helping them understand your business through your website can be key to increasing sales and customer retention. Stay tuned for more on websites and WordPress!
© 2023 Eleven2. All Rights Reserved.