I love the concept of something being “non-negotiable”.
A good definition is that’s something “not open for debate or modification”.
It’s good to make a lot of your good habits non-negotiables if you really want to grow and improve.
When you set your mind to the fact that you can’t debate or modify something (having a consequence for violating that often helps) it automatically becomes part of who you are.
So I had a thought the other day as I was going through a potential client’s website…
What if there were a couple of rules that any website of any kind should always follow? What if there were non-negotiables for your website (any landing page actually)?
And I came up with 3, here we go:
- Your website must clearly present what you do, who you do it for and how you do it.
- Your website must clearly showcase your offering, whether it’s physical or software products and even services.
- Your website must clearly and simply offer a call to action to the next step.
This is probably the simplest website audit you can run and it takes 1 minute of looking at any site’s homepage.
You could put it in formula format too:
- Value proposition + Offer + CTA
- Motivation + Value + Action
- etc…
The fact that it’s so easy to figure out using these 3 points, makes the flaws stand out.
Using the example of my prospective client’s website again, it took me literally 20 minutes to figure out what they actually do and what products they sell.
If it takes you more than 1/2 minutes there’s something wrong. Yes, even if you’re not in the target audience.
A few things to look for specifically for each point:
- Value proposition: look at the main headline and at crossheads
- Offer: look at the navigation menu categories and the middle section of the homepage
- CTA: look at links, buttons and their copy
Boom, done. You can now run a website audit the 80/20 way.
And in case you need a much deeper look at yours, where we use proven heuristic methods and an approach validated over thousands of usability studies and user interaction data, you can schedule a UX & Copy Teardown here.
