12/20/2011
The Boring Website Checklist
Does your business website produce sales or snores? Review the factors that determine whether your site gets A’s or Zzzzzz’s.
Content
Boring: Lots of industry jargon only you can understand.
Rip-roaring: Plain English.
Boring: Corporate speak; words or phrases like “synergy” and “deep dive”.
Rip-roaring: Plain English.
Boring: Long sentences that vaguely convey several inconsequential ideas.
Rip-roaring: Short sentences that sharply convey one important idea.
Boring: Product- and company-focused content.
Rip-roaring: Customer-focused content.
Boring: Expository, third-person writing.
Rip-roaring: Conversational writing that tells a story.
Boring: Content that takes itself way too seriously.
Rip-roaring: A lighthearted style.
Boring: Adjectives.
Rip-roaring: Verbs.
Design and Typography
Boring: Stock images that tell the same old story.
Rip-roaring: Custom images that tell your story.
Beyond boring: No images.
Rip-roaring: Images.
Boring: Bland color schemes.
Rip-roaring: Bold accent colors.
Boring: Overly wide or narrow margins that make reading difficult.
Rip-roaring: Line lengths suited for readability. (In the 600 pixel area.)
Boring: Uniformly styled headlines.
Rip-roaring: Distinctive styling for each type of headline.
Boring: Sites where every page looks alike.
Rip-roaring: Sites with unique page templates for various sections of content.
Boring: Long paragraphs with undifferentiated text.
Rip-roaring: Short paragraphs peppered with bold text and bullets.
Strategy and Structure
Boring: Sites without a call to action.
Rip-roaring: Sites that tell me what to do.
Boring: Deep page hierarchies that force me to click and click and click to find what I need.
Rip-roaring: Navigation that puts the info I crave never more than a click or two away.
Boring: Pages that take more than 10 seconds to figure out.
Rip-roaring: Pages whose purpose is immediately obvious.
Boring: Unsocialized sites.
Rip-roaring: Sites with a blog, social sharing and user-submitted content options (such as blog commenting).
OVER TO YOU
What have I missed? What makes a site boring to you?
Learn more about Web development services from Straight North. We work with middle market firms and specialize in B2B, with clients in industries as diverse as GPS vehicle tracking and merchant processing services.
6 Responses to The Boring Website Checklist
Great — but practice what you preach — is that a stock image at the top of the page ?!?
It most certainly is.
I’m a big fan of bullet points and KISS. Makes it easier for your human visitors, but at what expense for the spiders?
Great question. The best solutions I know are to put SEO content below the fold or within tabs. This keeps layouts clean while meeting the SEO needs, and also addresses the needs of visitors who want more details, few though they may be.
Agree with SEO content below the fold. Keep the actionable “stuff” accessible.
Great list, btw. Passing it through the office as we speech.
What I find interesting is that most websites try too hard which ultimately fails in the search engines. We can’t all talk in 3rd person and we can’t all be on the top of our game. My favorite: “Content that takes itself way to seriously”
Keep up the good work guys.