Un-Space-Jamming Your Web Design

(September 2, 2011) – Remember that Michael Jordan, Bugs Bunny flick called Space Jam from 1996? How about the website? The internet remembers. Have a look.

For 15 years, no one at Warner Brothers bothered to update the film’s website. As a relic of the 1990s, it is amusing and quaint.

Why am I bringing this up?

If your website looks antiquated, amusing, and quaint, you need to update it.

Your website is a modern-day business card. It’s the first thing people see. If it is ugly, hard to use, and displays incorrect information, it will hurt your business. 

A study by professor Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University determined that visitors judge a website within 50 milliseconds! They judge it’s usability, aesthetics, and datedness at first glance.

If the visitor subconsciously decides the website is old, ugly, and difficult to use, he or she will look at a competitor. Most B2B partners have invested in a modern web design; they don’t want to work with someone who has a Geocities site with blinky animated gifs.

And if you don’t have a mobile-friendly version, you can forget being seen by anyone browsing with a smartphone.

First impressions are everything on the web. Look at some of the businesses on this list. What is your first impression of them? Would you do business with them when there are hundreds of competing companies? It might not even be a conscious choice.

So what’s a good way to create and manage a usable, attractive, and up-to-date website?

At SVG we like to provide clients with a Content Management System (CMS). It sounds technical and complicated, but CMS’s are not more difficult to use than blogging software.

We use WordPress, for example, every day to post on our own blog, manage our portfolio, update our website, change contact details, and so on.

A CMS is essential for easily managing your social media and SEO. We often set up our clients with WordPress websites because they are so easy and flexible, but we can use other systems like Joomla or Drupal when they fit the client.

Just because you have a WordPress site (or other CMS) doesn’t mean you’ve solved the problems of usability and aesthetics—the WordPress default is quite hideous, for example.

That’s why SVG builds websites that are functional and appealing by integrating our clients’ brand aesthetics and even SVG-produced videos. We follow simple web design guidelines and check browser compatibility. This way, your company looks great in the first 50 milliseconds.

SVG also prepares our clients to manage the site on their own once it is launched. CMS’s make the process of updating and modifying easy. We can help develop new content, especially social media, that shows visitors that our clients are active and boost SEO.

SVG-built websites are where your marketing video, social media, and SEO can all come together.

Call us in the next 50 milliseconds, and we’ll get your new website started.