A start-up company recently hired us to help them with their website. They had their entire site designed using Photoshop, and needed our help making it functional and giving it a professional look. They had a product line of about 10 products, so this project also involved implementation of a custom shopping cart, which is one of our specialties.
One of their requests was that we review the home page to ensure that it was effective and made the right first impression, so that visitors would hopefully purchase something while they were there. I was reminded of a valuable lesson while reviewing their home page.
I had formed an opinion of their home page rather quickly, and to ensure that it was sound, I had 2 of my designers and a non-designer employee take a look at the site. We all agreed that the home page had a major flaw – it was nearly impossible to tell what products the company provided! Only after clicking around the site did it become obvious what they did – but we felt very strongly that the home page would leave the visitor feeling baffled, and that as a result visitors wouldn’t hang around the site long enough to find out what it was all about.
This was HUGE flaw!! The basic problem was, the business owners were so engrossed in their website, so involved in everything, that they were unable to step back and take an objective look to realize that it needed to be simplified and made more obvious.
After we made them aware of this problem, they had us redesign the home page, and since opening their online store, they have thanked us for the thousands of dollars we saved them in potentially lost revenue.
So the lesson is – keep it simple, and always get a 3rd party’s objective opinion.