Since websites do not (correction… should NEVER) include audio that the user doesn’t start themselves, we have to look at the visual equivalent to yelling and how to use it properly. If you have one person in a room speaking loud enough for you to hear, you listen to them and understand what they have to say. If you have 8 people talking at the same time, it doesn’t matter how loudly they are talking, you don’t hear what they have to say. In fact, it makes you want to leave the room.

There are many versions of yelling on the web, so it can be easy to make mistakes that drive people away from your site. Think of elements of your website as voices that must be used properly to be effective. Make sure that the elements draw the attention of your visitor in to your message. If they are not used properly, they will draw the attention out to the visual elements and structure of the site. You don’t have a website in order to show off a design, you have a website to send your message to people you are trying to reach. If your audience sees your design, and not your message (unless your message IS design), your site is a failure.

Colors are voices. People enjoy seeing colors, especially colors that give the feeling of being comfortable with being at your site and match the content. Color can be overused and you end up over-stimulating the eyes of your visitors with something that is not even related to your message. Obnoxious Bright colors can be used effectively, if they are used as accents or for that call to action that you really want to drive your visitors to. As a general rule, try to incorporate no more than two colors in the overall design of your site or you run the danger of losing your message before the visitor even gets to your content.

Headlines are voices. If everything is important, then nothing is important. Your headlines should call attention to important points of your overall message. If there are too many, it tells your audience you don’t really have an idea what your core message is.

Content is a voice. Content is an important part of your message. Content, however, should support your message, not distract from it. Your audience will get more out of your site by presenting content in a reasonable, organized fashion. That usually means that extensive content will go on a different page other than the homepage. Make it easy to navigate to, but make sure the visitor sees it only after they’ve decided they want to commit to that level of research.

Whitespace is a megaphone for your voices. Whitespace is an area without defined content. It doesn’t have to be white to be whitespace. It can be any color or gradient or even non-distracting graphics. It’s just area around the elements of your site that does not have content. Whitespace is necessary to be able to let the voices of your site speak clearly, one at a time, to your audience. Just because there is space on your monitor without text or images, it doesn’t mean you need to fill it with more fluff. That only takes away from the core message you want to send.

Find your core message. Your website should explain that clearly and every element of your website design should not just reflect and support that message, but also clearly convey it to your audience. That is what will make your website a success.

August, 1981: MTV Plays its first music video. That video was, appropriately, “Video Killed the Radio Star”. That event changed the way the public chose its popular music by adding a medium of consumption. The rules for success as a musician changed.

August, 1993: Global Network Navigator, the first commercial website, launches on the new fad called “The Internet.”

Both of those events were small (only a few thousand people even had access to MTV when it launched), but they signaled a shift in (cliché alert) the paradigm. If a band makes a video that people love, they can sell more of their music. I am purposefully omitting any reference to the quality of that music… that’s an entirely different blog post.

The internet MTV’d business real estate. It created property literally out of thin air. In traditional business real estate, location and building size are crucial in the success of a business. Now you don’t even have to have a physical address to own a successful business. The right domain name is worth much more than many business properties on busy street corners.

Did the Internet eliminate some of the constraints of business? Absolutely. Did the rules of business property change? At their core, No. Only some of the definitions changed. It doesn’t matter if you only have a brick-and-mortar business property, an online business or both, the basic rules still apply.

Is your business “property” inviting to consumers? If your nephew made your site as a high school project – and it looks like it – people will avoid visiting it just like they avoid run-down strip malls. Many of your internet visitors will never see your physical business, so the only real estate of yours they see is the pixels and text you put in front of them. Make sure your digital business property is appropriate for your potential clients.

That doesn’t mean that you have to have a flashy website, either. The lobby of your business doesn’t have to be covered in marble for you to be successful. It does, however need to be clean, easy to find, and it needs to make sense. Your potential clients will not go through confusing mazes to beat down the door to your business. They similarly will not try and track down information about you that is hard to find on your website.

The critical difference between your website and your physical business address, however, is that you are on your own to create your own success. A mediocre hotdog stand could make a fortune across the street from a busy stadium. A mediocre “hotdog” website will most likely not last, because property created out of thin air cannot take advantage of the proximity to others’ success.

There are ways that your business can be the rock star of the new real estate (the one that doesn’t close at night or on holidays). Just make sure you put as much thought and design into it as you do your building.

Most people wouldn’t.   Your website is not a digital billboard or a blinky arrow sign, web users don’t treat them that way.  They treat your website the same way they treat places to eat – they are picky, impatient, and they want variety.  Since the web is increasingly the way the world gets its information, you need to know what kind of restaurant your website is like.  Is it a popular 5-star restaurant … or is it a lemonade stand?

A good restaurant has to bring in customers.  You can’t bring people in if they don’t know you are there.  So how do you bring in those web patrons?  Search Engine Optimization (SEO), industry keywords, and web marketing do the job of that lighted marquee or the guy in the hot dog suit.  They make you visible and make people take notice of your site over your bland competitors.  When your potential customers search for your industry, you want them to find you first.

Once you have successfully gotten your company to be first in search results with keywords and SEO, your website’s job has just started. People make a decision to eat at a restaurant or make a break for the door before they even get seated.  So what do they see when they get in?  It needs to match what you do and who you are.  When you visit your favorite Chinese restaurant, they don’t have mariachi bands.  Your layout and imagery set the ambiance for your visitors. Your web design and graphics should reinforce your branding, purpose and goals of your company and should help drive visitors to action.  You only have a split second to catch the attention of your visitors. If they don’t like what they see, they won’t be interested in what you have to say.

That was a lot of work just to get your patron to the table, so you had better serve them some good food.  What does that mean to your website? Content, content, content. The more content you have with quality ingredients (real information that people want to consume), the more people will want to come to your site and stay longer.  The end result means more chances to call your visitor to action.

Even when you have a successful opening of your fine dining establishment (or very popular pizza joint), you can’t stand still.  Those visitors you managed to make happy still have short attention spans.  Your competitors can still get their own guy-in-a-hotdog-suit and grab the attention away from the fickle consumers you fought so hard to drive to your tables.  Always keep yourself in view of the web-public with content updates and social marketing.  That will bring in new and repeat patrons.

If you can do all that it takes to be successful in your web restaurant, you can define your genre and become the go-to website in your field.  In a crowded marketplace, that is where you want to be.