Website Design VS Functionality

How important is it that a website operates properly? VERY! A website needs to be functional as well as look good. I have seen so many sites that have great looking flash intros or have great looking graphics but do not work properly. So no one stays on the site, which isn’t that the reason you pay so much money to have a nice website built. A great website is one that your user can find the info, product or service that they came looking for.

Let's talk about Flash for moment. Flash can be a great tool to get your user's attention. But if used incorrectly, it only confuses and frustrates them. Flash intros were cool 5 years ago but pose two problems, they are not search engine friendly (search engine spiders have nothing to read, therefore nothing to index you by) and secondly they add a non important step to the user getting to the info they came for. What I recommend is having a section on the home page that has a flash movie in it. This enables you to both capture the user's attention as well as keep it all on the same page as the info they came looking for. It could have a slide show of your gallery or it could educate them on what makes your company better, etc. The possibilities are endless. What this does is allow the user to view it if they want to or go somewhere else if they are not interested.


Navigation is also a very important part of your site performing correctly. I have seen so many sites that have what I like to call rabbit holes. These are links that go to links that go to links and then you realize that there is no way of getting back to the page you were just on, without hitting the back button. Very frustrating! Another navigation error I have seen, is having two different navigation areas, one set of buttons are on the top and then there is another set of different buttons going down the side. Which one has the info your looking for? Who knows? Or do you even see the other ones? There is a very simple solution though. Create a navigation that incorporates all of the buttons on your site in one area and make sure that it is on every page. If you want to put new buttons on a page that break down a section into sub sections, just make sure you include the main navigation on every page inside the sub pages. Also, make sure that your buttons are listed in order of importance to your user, not you. That way they can find what they are looking for faster with less frustration. Simple right? Yet I am amazed at how many sites (major companies too) have horrible navigation with one or more of these issues. I was on a retail site the other day, I won’t say which one. I came to the site to find a local store and a phone number. Now for a retail company that button should be of high priority. Nope, it wasn’t, it took me almost a minute to find the store locator. There were 100 different buttons on this site and this one was one of the smallest button and was camouflaged in with 10 other really close buttons. If I didn’t already know that this company had what I needed and was a quality company, I would have left long before ever finding a local store. So in saying all that, if your users can’t find what they are looking for, what’s the point. So make sure you keep it clean and simple so that your users find your website easy to use. Ultimately that will leave a lasting impression in the mind of your user.

So when building a website remember that it must be designed well and also be functional. Feel free to call us at 770.630.1975 and we can review your site and suggest ideas to make sure your website looks and functions properly.