Your Website Sucks, Let’s Make it Awesome

Scarlett RosierCo-Founder, Rhyme & Reason Design@scar_ro

O C T 3 1 , 2 0 1 7

P R E S E N T E D B Y

Uh Oh.

On a scale of 1-10,how bad is it?

Scream, shout and tell me why it sucks!

The industry

says it sucks.

User Experience/Functionality

T H E I N D U S T R Y S A Y S I T S U C K S B E C A U S E O F . . .

REASON

#1

USER EXPERIENCE (UX): A person’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service. It includes the practical, experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership.

Bad User Experience Example:

Good User Experience Example:

AWESOME FIX #1:

User Experience/Functionality

Content

T H E I N D U S T R Y S A Y S I T S U C K S B E C A U S E O F . . .

REASON

#2

Bad Content Example:

Good Content Example:

AWESOME FIX #2:

Content

PRO TIP: A website is a living, breathing thing, you can and should update content regularly to keep it fresh.

Design

T H E I N D U S T R Y S A Y S I T S U C K S B E C A U S E O F . . .

REASON

#3

Bad Design Example:

Good Design Example:

AWESOME FIX #3:

Design

Search

T H E I N D U S T R Y S A Y S I T S U C K S B E C A U S E O F . . .

REASON

#4

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO): The process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.

Bad Search Example:

Good Search Example:

AWESOME FIX #4:

Search

PRO TIP: Focus on these four items first:

1. Understand your customers

2. Develop quality content

3. Link internally and externally

4. Keyword carefully

Content Management System/Functionality

T H E I N D U S T R Y S A Y S I T S U C K S B E C A U S E O F . . .

REASON

#5

CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS): A content management system is a computer application that supports the creation and modification of digital content. It is often used to support multiple users working in a collaborative environment.

1. Open-source: Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal,

2. Proprietary

Bad CMS/Functionality Example:

Good CMS/Functionality Example:

AWESOME FIX #5:

CMS

PRO TIP: If you are using WordPress it has some incredible user tutorials that you can watch/read that will help troubleshoot nearly every plugin on your site. Check it out here: https://learn.wordpress.com/

Google Says So

T H E I N D U S T R Y S A Y S I T S U C K S B E C A U S E O F . . .

BONUS

REASON

!!!

MOBILE RESPONSIVE: A responsive website automatically changes to fit the device you’re reading it on. There are four general screen sizes that responsive design has been aimed at: the widescreen desktop monitor, the smaller screen (laptop), tablet and mobile phone.

HTTPS:Consists of communication over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) within a connection encrypted by Transport Layer Security or its predecessor Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

Bad Google Example:

Good Google Example:

BONUS AWESOME FIX:

Google

What did I learn?

Websites are judged harshly based on:

1. User Experience

2. Content

3. Design

4. Search

5. CMS

6. Google

But, I have the power to change things.

Pro tip cheat sheet

D O W N L O A D I T A T

RhymeAndReasonDesign.com/WebsiteProTips

You guys are awesome and your sites will be too!

Any questions?