Look at your website. Why does it look the way it looks?

I guess mostly because it was created using a very flexible, modern web-builder and you tried to implement every single idea that popped up in your mind at the time of creating it.

As a result, your website is over-complicated, slow, ugly and has trouble catching up with the latest technologies.

Colors: Are you serious?

Combination of colors used on your website is important. Not that I think that you don’t know it. You know that colors are important. That’s why you put an extra effort when choosing them. But is the final look of your website neat and professional or do you like it just because it was YOU who picked the colors?

Everyday, when I surf an online ocean of websites I find dozens examples of color combinations that remind me of kookie kid’s toys. I say to myself: “This must be a joke…”

Building website is not a one time job

This is a common mistake of many web owners. If you think that you build your website once and for all, you’re wrong. It won’t help if you pay big bunch of money to someone to build it for you either.

You can see where am I going to now:

  • Does your website look good on retina display?
  • Is it responsive or semi-responsive, adjusting only partially to certain number of screen sizes and resolutions?
  • Are you ready to rebuild your website anytime to accommodate the next level of technological revolution?

Too many options is TOO MANY

Drag & drop page builders offer full liberty in web creation. Modern web tool you use has so many options to choose from. You can put anything anywhere on your website, there’s no limitations. You can let your creativity run wild.

These are the main advantages of today’s page builders IF you are a professional, sensible and experienced designer.

In case you’re not, installing the whole web building kit is a simple waste of your web space. Realistically, you’re going to use about 10% of its potential and the rest will be just slowing down your website loading.

It’s like shooting sparrows with a cannon - not going to work.

But demo preview looked sooo good!

Are you wondering why your website doesn’t look as great as demo preview did?

Demo preview has two main purposes:

  1. To show you the potential of the product at its best.
  2. To catch your attention and make you buy the product. 

You choose the web builder and buy it based on the look of demo preview. That’s ok. As long as the final outcome (= your website) looks as good as the original demo preview.

So if you used the theme or drag & drop page builder, I suggest comparing your website to the demo preview right when you’re finished building it. If you like demo preview more than your actual website, something went wrong along the way and you should consider redesigning your website.

Usability and usefulness

You can look at usability and usefulness of your website from 2 different perspectives:

  • your own, and
  • your web visitors.

Does the web creator’s vision match web visitor’s preferences? The content on your website needs to be well arranged and information should be easy to find. Not the information that you think is important but the information that your web visitors want to read. First version of your website should be created with a lot of consideration and by someone who has experience with “client comes first” web design.

Once you have a strong headstone of your website, it’s easy to track your web visitor’s actions, collect information and make improvements. But if you have a rusty skeleton full of mess, not even the best or most expensive tracking tool will help you organize it better. The reports will be nothing but a bunch of chaos.

Conclusion

After many years of experience with web design, I can imagine quite well what’s behind the scene of ugly, unresponsive and over-complicated website. Often it’s a well meant, elaborated web builder which ended up in wrong hands. Color combination was not picked by a professional designer, content and web structure was arranged by someone with zero previous experience in a certain sphere and web owner doesn’t have enough time and money for regular redesigns to catch up with latest trends and technologies (Who does, right?).

So tell me, as the owner of an ugly website, have you built your website just for yourself? Don’t you feel sorry for the wasted web space your web building installation package takes and its never-used potential covered in dust?