Make Your Website Stand Out From the Rest

Make Your Website Stand Out From the Rest

Whatever product or service you are selling on the internet, others are selling it too. Fortunately, the internet is big enough to support many sellers. You don’t have to be first, or even best, to do well. What you do have to do is stand out from the crowd, somehow. If a person makes it to your website looking for something you can provide, he had better see something that makes him stop long enough to look you over. (Getting that person to your website is not the subject of this article. However you did it, well done!)

Even if you haven’t had the money or know-how to do a full marketing survey and get the exact “hot buttons” that will nail your prospect between the eyes, all is not lost. Over twenty years in the field of typography (arranging words on a page) have given me some knowledge I don’t mind sharing. If you apply it, and it helps, great! No matter what, it can’t hurt.

1. Make everything easy to read.

This seems obvious, until you start seeing websites with illegible logos, or jarringly bright colors, or letters all squished together or stretched far apart. Remember, people don’t read words letter by letter, but as complete units. If a word is not instantly and easily read, it might never be. Always test readability by asking a few friends to look at your site and tell you honestly if anything on it was hard to read right away.

2. Pictures are good, if they add to understanding.

ANY picture should be clear and obvious. Too many times pictures are not sharp, or not labeled or explained. If you want to show how your widget has an extra whatsit on it, that whatsit had better be focused, highlighted, and begging to be held. Some stock photo won’t cut it.

3. This is the big one, that will make your website different from all of your competition:

Make no typographic errors!

Typographic errors include misspellings, inconsistent spacing (between lines, words, or letters), missing or extra punctuation, transposed characters, and other misuse or abuse of printed characters. Grammatical errors are not the same as typographic errors, but they do create similar effects.

If you look over 100 websites, you will find typographic errors in either 99 or 100 of them. Fact. What does that tell you about each and every one of those businesses? That it has less than full concern for quality, especially if there are more than one or two mistakes.

Typographic perfection will not make a person go to your site all by itself, but typographic errors can certainly cause him to go away. Most people do not recognize how much effect typos have. The truth of the matter, from my years of experience, is that typos create actual physical feelings of illness and unease. These feelings are usually not noticeable, or are barely noticeable, but they are there. They create a negative effect.

Typos do slip through, despite all proofreading. Errors are forgivable. There is NO valid excuse, however, for allowing them to remain after you notice them or someone points them out.

Attempting to make your website typo-free has another beneficial side effect as well: it raises your demand for quality overall. Looking diligently for typos will reveal other flaws at the same time, just by virtue of the extra attention you are giving the site. You might notice something doesn’t line up as well as it should, or just looks awkward where it is.

All errors are preventable, by definition. All website errors are fixable. If you drive even one prospect away by demonstrating a lack of concern for quality, you deserve to lose that sale. This might be harsh, but so is the marketplace.