Yep, that’s my website. After complaining about someone else’s poor design, I decided to throw stones at myself and see what I’d find when I squinted at my own site. The results weren’t really pretty. With just a visual scan, I found all the above-mentioned issues:

What’s Wrong With My Site (my POV)

Quick note. I found the following in my Google Analytics: my bounce rate is exceptionally high, that people don’t spend a lot of time on site, and that they’re not clicking what I want.

• My calls to action are too plentiful.
• My subscription options are too plentiful.
• I’ve given no real “path” for my posts and your learning.

In sum, it’s poorly designed from an information design perspective. Further, it’s not an especially good sales piece in that regard. Finally, it really needs some tuning up.

What My Site Should be Doing

The purpose of my site (for those who visit it directly) is to encourage new relationships and to convert people into either subscribers or buyers (of my services). I don’t think my site does an adequate job of the later, and could stand to do a better job of the former.

What Should I Do?

What I’ll plan to do is revisit the reasons for every piece of my site’s design.

• I’m pleased with the thin header image, but might swipe out the graphic.

• I think the pages I display at the top of the page make sense, but I might “highlight” the two that I mention in this image.
• I will edit how I call for subscriptions, but will leave the email subscription prominently on top.
• I might remove my newsletter subscription option from the top-left, and make that part of a subsequent page.

And You?

Now, with what I’ve covered above as a backdrop, what does YOUR site do, and how do you think it stands up when you squint at it? Feel free to leave a URL to your site in the comments section.

Um.

So, as a customer, a user of this product, I stopped. I looked. I wondered what would happen if I picked the left slot, but that one ate my coins. I wondered if there was any discernible difference. I wondered what would happen if I put one coin in the left slot and two in the right.

Is your online presence like this? By offering people too many choices, are you causing an unintentional barrier? If you put your online presence all over the place, are you accidentally causing a queuing problem, because people aren’t sure which place to reach out to you? (I have this problem with Facebook: people message me there because they know my inbox is busy, but I only check Facebook mail once a week, because it’s 90% people spamming me about their dumb seminar.)

What about you? How simple is it to determine where to put my 75 cents?

It’s important to think about where you want information to live, and how you want it to impact the world. For everything you toss into a stream rolls past, and if I’m not at the stream when you throw your leaf onto the waters, I’ll miss the leaf entirely, or perhaps catch only the ripples.

I love the picture in this post by Guy Kawasaki. If I share it with Twitter, you might see it. If I blog it, you can come back to it. If I tweet a link to my blog post, I’ve just introduced a stopping point to my stream.

Now, Shift the Analogy

What if your blog itself is comprised of streams and stopping points? Are you introducing data into your stream (the posts) that needs to actually reside at a stopping point (the pages)? Have you made it easy for your blog to help you do business?

To Do Next

Design the flow of information in all of the systems you use. Think about temporary and permanent connections. Think about loosely-joined groups, and about how information spreads.

The stream is a great place to refresh, to see life, and to feel vibrant energy flow past. It is a powerful giver of life. But remember: life often happens out of view of the stream.

Thoughts?

Photo credit tanakwho