Our Guide to Surviving the Boring Website Plague

The boring website plague—if there was any modern digital marketing horror story that could possibly be worth having chills over, this would definitely be it. 

According to several social media scientists, 2020 will see quite a steep increase in boring website plague-related cases as misinformation becomes rampant and more patient zeroes pop up in every niche on the internet. With the plague running rampant, websites suffering from boring website syndrome are expected to experience the following side-effects: 

• Drops in website visits
• De-ranking on search results
• Sudden website death (SWD)

Thankfully, the best vaccine for the plague simply lies in proper education and awareness on what to avoid and how you can keep your own homepage from contracting the website performance-killer. As the digital media sirens continue to ring out day and night and more websites fail in finding a cure or bouncing back after being afflicted, here are a few symptoms to watch out for (and how you can treat them): 

1. A home page with no focal point

Trying to run a home page without a focal point is pretty much like a broken pencil: it doesn’t have a purpose. 

Generally, the lack of a focal point occurs when a website has too little or too much content. Bombarded home pages look too cluttered to zone in on a specific aspect while deserted ones simply have nothing to focus on. Regardless of whether you have too much or too little going on, it’s safe to say that your website is going to experience the full force of the boring website plague if it doesn’t have a set focal point.

Our prescription: When building your website’s home page, build around the idea of what it’s visitors really want and need to know so that they can be enticed into clicking deeper and exploring your site for much longer. In most cases, adding in some dynamics into your web design with a slider or using a hero image in order to represent a message that you want to get across will suffice as an effective focal point on your home page.

2. A lack of opportunities for interaction

One of the most important pillars of great and effective web design is proper interaction. However, if you don’t have any opportunities for interaction, then expect to see low conversion rates and other effects of the boring website plague to take full effect. Without a sufficient number of opportunities for interaction, expect your website to fall short of its potential and become the subject of ranting across online forums and reviews.

Our prescription: Research on what interactive functions you can use for your website and target market or visitors. For example, some cases call for a flashy interactive landing page as a solution, while others require a simple video embedding or an in-depth photo gallery. If you’re looking to increase your interaction, you may insert a comment section and reaction bar on every topic or page.

3. Your pages are plagued with blocks of text and nothing else

If there’s no difference between a novel and any one of your website’s pages, then you definitely have a problem with your visual balance and content allotment. Filling your website pages with endless blocks of text may seem like a way to sound smart on your end, but the truth is that you’re putting your visitors to sleep and sending them elsewhere. 

Our prescription: Reduce your text as much as possible and turn your remaining blocks of text into easy-to-digest visual assets, such as videos, photos, audio links, or infographics. Another great way to limit your text content is to divide it into multiple sections that can ease up the reading process and make every piece of information more digestible. 

Sparing your website from the adverse effects of the boring website plague can be easily done by knowing what symptoms to watch out for and taking the right measures to counteract them. 

If you’re looking for a creative web design agency in Leeds, get in touch with us today to see how we can help.