You may be shocked to learn that website visitors only spend 15 seconds on website before clicking out of it. So how can you design your site to keep your visitors engaged? Often times when you are building your own site, there is an enormous amount of time you spend making sure it is perfect, the way you want, and functioning well based on your perception. However, this process often creates a rabbit hole effect where you might spend hours trying to get it right before launching the website live.
DAWG It
At Two Koi Designs we use a concept called “DAWG”, which stands for DESIGN AS WE GO. The idea is that you put together a site in raw form making sure that images are good, writing is edited and streamlined, and inner links are performing as they need to. After, launch the site live to the public. Every day the site is live you will see areas that need tweaked or adjusted. You can also get feedback from friends, collogues, and others on their opinions and input of your work. These suggestions and edits are then implemented right away to your already live site. Thus, the Design As We Go concept allows you to the ability to have a web presence quickly without having to wait for months on a website that has to be perfect. Furthermore, this allows time for search engines to populate your site, gain traffic, and build brand equity. Here are three basic rules to follow in order to DAWG a website and help your creative process be successful.
Quality vs. Quantity
Less is more. If you realize that your audience spends only 15 minutes of their time on the site, make sure you grab the attention quickly with quality images, easy to read paragraphs, and a layout that is not busy. It would be better to have a website with 1 or 2 pages of what you need to say then a website of 20 pages exhausting your brand. Visitors will get lost and quickly lose interest and move on.
Focus on the Goal
If 15 seconds are all that the average user spends on a site then what message do you want to convey within such a short time period? Use images that generate a focus to your goal of what the site is meant for. The days of having a webpage with 50 sub links to other pages, dropdown menus, and cluttered data are gone. Streamline the look so your goal of the site stands out through the design.
Search Engine Optimization
Yoast SEO, which is search engine optimization, is a topic I could spend hours talking about. It’s the one plugin for your site that helps with optimization and search engine results. Using SEO tools helps make your website more visible and builds brand equity for the long game. However, setting this up can be a daunting task and that is something we will blog about later. Still, when you DAWG your site, setting up SEO on each page can be done over time as you make tweaks to the site. I use the DAWG concept continually with my SEO content, which helps with keeping my many websites updated, current, and fresh.
Interested in learning more or wanting to start your own website? Drop me a line so we can connect and see if Two Koi Designs is the right fit for you. We offer free consultations and there’s never pressure to buy.
