The web is a busy place, millions of websites all competing for visitors within their niche. Getting visitors to remember your site can be done by promoting RSS feeds and constantly referring to your site as WhateverYourNameIs.com, as well as many other methods. With the web being such a busy place it is important that your design stands out, this in itself can make you memorable.
After first visiting your site, a few months down the line a visitor may not remember your website name/address but may remember the search term they typed into Google to get to your site (it may be saved in their computer). If your site has a boring generic template used by lots of others they may search for your site, find it and think “was this is it? Ill keep looking as im not sure”. If you have a unique and memorable template they will think “yes here it is, great ive found it” and will use your website again instead of a competitors.
The redesign of our main site FreeStockImages.net is now complete, and in the process I decided to compromise purity in order so the site stands out amongst the crowd. The color scheme is ‘red/green/black’, the red and green colors naturally developed because of the header image I had chosen. I don’t think the red titles in each nav are particularly eye pleasing, and the green hyperlinks aren’t the prettiest things either. Overall the design could use different colors and be a lot purer. However the site definitely stands out more as a result, and it still doesn’t look bad (albeit not to everyones taste).
So in conclusion, when designing your website it is important to set high standards regardless of what you are trying to achieve. It is also important to stand out from the crowd, if you have the choice of either;
- The design is perfect, clean and crisp but doesn’t stand out
- It looks good, isn’t perfect but does stand out a lot more then the perfect design
I would go with the second choice everytime, you still have a good design and will have more return visitors mean higher profits for your business.
