Most web sites aren’t nearly as effective as they could be.*

At Portent, we’ve critiqued and evaluated hundreds of web sites, learning what works, what doesn’t and – most important – how to improve them.

Here are some of the most common pitfalls of web sites, and how Portent’s creative team eliminates them:

The Problem: Bad writing. Imagine you’re shopping for a television and the salesperson immediately starts talking about voltage multipliers, flyback transformers and MOSFET snubbers. You’d walk away, right? Yet it’s common for sites to be filled with jargon that drives away potential customers.

The Portent Solution: Create content that clearly informs, conveys value and persuades the visitor to take the desired action. Portent has an in-house copywriting team that gets you noticed. Our onsite copy converts. Our offsite copy gets you published on sites like MSNBC, Virgin.com and other major destinations.

The Problem: Getting noticed. You’ve got thousands of competitors, all clamoring for your audience’s attention. How are you going to be heard?

The Portent Solution: Content marketing that entertains and informs your audience, while also grabbing the attention of major influencers in your space. Infographics, articles and other creative that gets you noticed:

The Problem: Bad Nav. As in navigation. As in visitors landing on your site and not being able to quickly find what they came for. Faced with such a situation, many visitors will simply move on to another (competitor’s?) site.

The Portent Solution: Structuring web content and architecture in a manner that increases user speed and ease-of-use.

The Problem: The Uglies. Don’t get us wrong. Web sites don’t necessarily have to be works of art. A plain design can be beautiful if it succeeds in effectively communicating your brand message. But too many sites are war zones of conflicting colors, fonts and illustrations, all of which distract from what you want to convey.

The Portent Solution: Carefully consider the audience, then design the site in a complementary manner that attracts and keeps the attention of the visitor. This could include the prudent use of graphics, animations and video.

The Problem: All the “little” problems. You know – inadvertent ‘404’ error pages, search functions that aren’t smart enough, videos that load too slow or won’t play on certain browsers. The kinds of things that make visitors grit their teeth, shake their heads and click away.

The Portent Solution: We employ Contingency Design in all web sites we create and maintain. It’s a discipline and method that anticipates problems and either avoids them outright, or minimizes their impact until they can be corrected, making for an uninterrupted web experience.

*As effective as they could be if Portent designed them.

See for yourself what Portent can do you for. Contact us today.