Give Site Visitors What They Expect
Most folks I work with have ideas of what they want and where they want it when it comes to the layout of their sites. That’s why I stress when selecting a premium WordPress theme that they take the time to go through the provided theme demos to ensure the placement of navigation, information and widgets is how they want to display their site’s information.
What happens quite often, however, is the desire to have certain features that are located in in specific areas for good reason, moved and/or replaced with data or information that the site owner wants prioritized. I get that. But what we all have to remember is there are expectations by your site visitors for common site items to be placed where visitors are used to finding them and will look to find them. Readers like what they are used to. We don’t want to mess with that!
Examples of this include having contact info in the footer, subscribe, Twitter and Facebook links in the top right of the sidebar — I am of the school these items need to be “above the fold” while the other side of this debate is these items should be in the footer. Either will work as those are the two most common areas on most sites where we know we will find this information.
Above the fold means having your most important information display without site visitors having to scroll vertically down the page. Your above the fold presentation is what provides visitors with that all so important and sometimes one-shot first impression of your site.
While we all want what we want, we can’t ignore what visitors will expect when they land at our site if we want to draw them in and keep them seeking more. There is a great article for you to read that explains all these nuances by comparing page area in a Web site to real estate. This article covers what goes where by walking you through why location, above the fold, reading direction, zoning and even the size of your features matter so you can Get More From Your Site’s Visual Acreage.
Time for you to invest in your Web site’s real estate!
At your service,
Judith
Tags: landing pages, WordPress, wordpress themes
2 Responses to “Give Site Visitors What They Expect”
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Hi Judith,
Thanks for sharing our post with your readers, it’s great to hear you found it useful.
I agree with you that it’s an important thing to consider when choosing a premium theme. I think that as well as the demos, a great thing to look at is how easy it is for you to control the layout/positioning of elements in the theme.
That way, even if not everything is perfect, you can edit it a little and get it just the way you want it.
.-= Michael Martin´s last blog … Automatic Amazon s3 Backups on Ubuntu / Debian =-.
Hey, Michael:
Thanks for stopping by! If I can have the opportunity to walk through a theme with a client before they make a purchase, I can then point out what portions of the layout/positioning is widgetized and therefore easier for them to change vs. what I would have to do on their behalf. Good point! ;-)