check out our new website

[Jon Stratis]

I just looked at the website, and it seems like you guys are trying to get across a lot of information with it, which is great. And spending some time there you really do have some good information available. However, according to old studies I read back in school, you typically have 5 seconds to really catch the attention of someone visiting your site for the first time before they move on.

When you first go to the site, what do you see? For me, the first thing I notice is the spinning gears at the top. Yeah, they're cool... but they pull the eye away from what your trying to get across. The colorful header and left sidebar with sponsor logos is certainly attractive... but again, it draws the eye away from what your trying to convey. The text on the page (like the FAQs on the homepage) looks dull next to so much color and diversity.

Contrast your home page with ours. We have a extraordinarily simple layout, with nothing to distract the eye from point we're trying to get across. When you visit our site, you immediately see what makes our team unique - it's an all girls team. By getting that information across to the viewer in the first few seconds of visiting the site, it helps to draw them in.

Take the time to identify what makes your team unique, and ensure that gets conveyed to the viewer in the first 5 seconds. Focus on what catches the eye, and make sure the viewers focus is going to be where you want.

A great way to do this is to sit someone down (a stranger, family member, teacher... so long as they haven't seen the site before), and give them 5 seconds look at the page. Then cover the monitor and ask them what they thought. Find out where they looked on the page, and what information was conveyed in those first few seconds. Rework the page as needed, and repeat this procedure until they can tell you what main selling point of your team is, and that their eye is drawn first to the main information on the page.