Marcus Ohanesian (00:03.251)
Hey everyone, this is Marcus Ohanishan. I am an ecommerce strategist. I come from a design background, went to school for it, have my own little agency built out of that. I love everything ecommerce. I’ve been in the Shopify ecosystem for a while, as well as WordPress space for non-ecommerce sites. Let’s see, I love sandwiches, I love coffee, and I love craft beer, and those are my personal antidotes.

Karin (00:28.783)
I love that you lead with sandwiches because I feel like they’re so underrated. So we could have a whole show about sandwiches because seriously, like it just brings all the best of the best together in like one bite. It’s so great and it’s portable. It’s so awesome.

Marcus Ohanesian (00:33.707)
totally.

Marcus Ohanesian (00:37.459)
would love to.

Marcus Ohanesian (00:42.964)
Yeah.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If, if you find me a person, or try to find me a person that doesn’t love a good sandwich. In it.

Karin (00:54.058)
Seriously, because I mean, you can, there’s endless possibilities with sandwiches. Yeah. I feel like there’s a way, go ahead. Sorry.

Marcus Ohanesian (01:00.923)
Yeah. If you don’t like a sandwich, you’re probably like a robot. You’re like an AI bot or something. Yeah.

Karin (01:04.874)
Seriously, or a serial killer, something. Like there’s something seriously wrong. I feel like I’m going to find a way in this conversation to tie in sandwiches to website design. I will find a way somehow. I’m gonna even make a note for myself. By the end of this show, we will tie back in sandwiches with all of this awesome stuff we’re talking about, which is design, like you mentioned, you have an agency, you have a background in design.

Marcus Ohanesian (01:19.583)
Perfect.

Karin (01:35.006)
similar to myself and so I have a feeling this there’s going to be so many things we could talk about with this but the title of the show for today is Clashing and Chaotic the Visual Strain of Cluttered Websites. So that alone there’s a lot to unpack there but let’s just start where should we start? Let’s start with what’s what do you think the first biggest most horrendous kind of problem

Marcus Ohanesian (01:41.503)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (01:52.148)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (02:03.382)
visually that people do with their website. Off the top of your head.

Marcus Ohanesian (02:08.831)
Right off the bat, just too much information. Trying to communicate too many messages. Like, it’s all over the map, and it doesn’t even have to be visually, too. You could have lots of messages in the tone and the paths to go down, but it could just be a couple different things versus having a website cluttered with elements and components that are taken away from it visually, right? But just having too many messages as a whole is what I always say.

Karin (02:11.57)
Yes. Yeah.

Karin (02:28.727)
Yes.

Karin (02:32.694)
Yeah, I feel like especially when businesses are just getting started. So whether you have lots of experience and you’re just now starting out and starting your own firm or you haven’t, either way when this is kind of the first iteration of a website and you haven’t done this before, I feel like there’s so many things you want to say to people. And you know, I always I feel like everyone tends to quote Apple or reference Apple.

But I’m going to do that. I’m going to do it anyway. Because let’s just talk for a minute about how hard it is to make things more succinct and take away those elements and those extra words. That’s more complicated than just throwing it all in.

Marcus Ohanesian (03:03.083)
Thank you.

Marcus Ohanesian (03:22.127)
Agreed. Yeah, it’s harder because your natural intention as a human being is to over communicate. So when you’re building a website, you’re building the home page and whether you’re a new firm just starting up and your branding and your messaging is still kind of in the infant stages of getting developed or if you’ve been a firm for 20, 30 plus years, right? You’re a legacy brand at that point. You have your messaging, you have everything dialed in. It’s so easy to overload with we do

Karin (03:28.908)
Right.

Karin (03:50.658)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (03:51.443)
You know, same thing with service offerings, right? Everyone’s niche down, you know, find your one specialty and do that 200%, right? I mean, there’s a reason for that, you know, because your messaging is clear, right? And it’s easier in a way to dial that in versus putting everything on the table and hoping that some of that sticks, you know?

Karin (03:56.534)
Yeah. Right.

Karin (04:03.159)
Yes.

Karin (04:11.17)
Right, right, exactly. I heard a great, I was listening to Seth Godin one time and he was talking about how imagine you are in an obscure small town in Canada somewhere, like fishing, and you hurt your left knee. And all of a sudden, all your concerns and focus in that moment is

I need help with my left knee and you don’t care about your shoulder right now. You don’t care about any other part of your body. You want someone who is going to fix your left knee. And so if there is an orthopedist whose website specifically mentions, I’m especially good with left knees, you are going to go to that guy versus one who’s like, I do toes and I do backs and you know, I do kind of a little mix of everything.

Marcus Ohanesian (05:00.081)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (05:08.778)
And then you kind of wonder, well, what about left knees? You know, are they gonna be good? Have they ever actually done the left knee before? Or am I just gonna kind of show up and cross my fingers? So think about how that feels when you’re in that moment where you really need the one thing. And if someone responds to that in that specific way, all of a sudden you’re like, oh yeah, this is it. This is my guy. This is my person. Yeah.

Okay, so what happens when, what’s happening in the mind of the user when you do overload that website and you’ve got all the message and the visuals and the spinning gerbils and you know, like lights flashing and then the slider kind of going, it’s like, you know, what’s happening? What’s happening to that user?

Marcus Ohanesian (05:56.284)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (06:01.399)
They are confused, first and foremost. They’re overwhelmed. There’s no trust being built, which is the main factor there. So from a new brand perspective, or the first time that this user’s on your website and just wants to maybe learn what you do, your years of experience, your specialties, all that sort of stuff, they’re not gonna learn by getting things thrown at them. So it’s just like the common…

use case of you go to an e-commerce website and within the first two seconds you get a pop-up sign up for 10% off. Well, I don’t know what I want yet. I don’t even know if I’m going to order. I want to just learn about this product that I just saw in like a commercial, if that’s still a thing, you know, or, or somewhere else, right? Um, yeah, Instagram most likely, right? So they’re there to get educated. So we always tend to lead with, uh, education and empowerment is first and foremost because

Karin (06:34.018)
Yeah.

Karin (06:42.238)
Yeah. Instagram. Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (06:55.763)
when you educate them on the value, not the features, right? So I’m thinking about it in almost a technology space, right? There’s a good comparison of the iPod, right? So remember the iPod back in the day? Not an Apple Watch or your iPhone, but the actual iPod that had the spinning wheel on it, I’m dating myself, but.

Karin (06:59.328)
Yes.

Karin (07:15.775)
The functional spinning wheel and inside you could hear the drive actually spin when you push the buttons. I love that. Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (07:21.063)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yep. So going back to that, the Apple’s marketing campaign behind all that was just the photo of the product. And it said, this can hold 5,000 songs versus this is 60 megabytes. It resonates more, right? So you’re selling the features and the benefits of the product, not the technical specs. Nobody cares about that stuff. So my point here is making it relevant to a website.

Karin (07:34.558)
Yeah. Right. Yes.

Karin (07:47.52)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (07:50.527)
is educate the user, but in the most curated, non-obtrusive way, basically.

Karin (07:56.478)
right. So don’t lead with the legal jargon. Don’t lead with like you need xyz legal form and I’m gonna you know let me tell you about this case law blah blah. Don’t lead with all that stuff that many lawyers think makes them look great and smart and validates their law school experience and make you know that’s not what

Marcus Ohanesian (08:01.341)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (08:25.358)
That’s not the way to do it. So what would be the translation then? So I’m trying to tell my user that I’ve got all this experience. I understand this kind of a case, but I don’t want to use the legal jargon. So instead, how should they say that? Or.

Marcus Ohanesian (08:26.843)
Yeah, exactly.

Marcus Ohanesian (08:37.544)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (08:46.487)
Yeah, so there’s a couple different ways. One obviously is like dynamic personalization and get all techie and you can track where they came from and customize the messaging and marketing to that person because you know about them already, right? Which is what email marketing kind of does in a way, just not with your name, but also like abandoned carts. I’m sure you’ve seen on e-commerce sites, you add something to your cart, you leave, you get an email, hey, and then they market, right? But from a…

Karin (09:04.354)
Yes.

Karin (09:08.054)
What happened? Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (09:12.071)
you know, an attorney lawyer standpoint is it happens in the tech space too. A lot of like, uh, web agencies will say, we do all this coding and we do all this technical stuff. And if you’re a client or a potential client or an e-commerce merchant that needs, uh, an agency, none of that stuff means anything to them. You’re just convoluting the message, you know? So that’s what I was saying. You can still have a nicely designed headline on your website, right? You get the, the logo, the navigation right under that. And like your hero section will call it. You have like your tagline of like,

Karin (09:30.63)
No. Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (09:42.055)
We are this company and we do this. You could say that in many different ways. So the long-winded answer to your question is basically dwindling it down like you’re talking to your six-year-old cousin or someone that doesn’t understand what you do. Because I’d rather oversimplify it than overcomplicate it.

Karin (10:01.566)
Yeah. And then talk about, you mentioned earlier talking about the value of it versus those kind of technical features. So instead of like the case law or the legal jargon and all of that, talking about how you’re going to help them find their freedom if it’s a criminal defense firm or we’re gonna help your business stay safe or wherever the value is, what are they coming to you?

Marcus Ohanesian (10:15.177)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (10:23.912)
Right.

Marcus Ohanesian (10:28.668)
Yeah.

Karin (10:30.882)
for, what are they saying when they talk to you that they’re, why are they coming to you? They’re not coming to you saying, I heard you know, case law really well. There’s no clients saying that when they walk through the door. They’re, they’re saying, I am freaking out. I ha I need some contracts and I don’t know what I’m doing and I feel insecure or whatever their language is. That’s what you use.

Marcus Ohanesian (10:39.803)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (10:57.015)
Mm-hmm. Right, so this is actually a good episode for me to be on because your target market is a bunch of lawyers and attorneys from what I know. And I know nothing about that stuff. I will pay you as much money as I need to for you to fix my problem and maybe make me money or maybe not lose money or save my butt in a potential lawsuit, right? That’s the value that you guys are providing that y’all are doing.

Karin (11:05.61)
Yeah, that’s perfect.

Karin (11:13.663)
Exactly.

Karin (11:20.096)
Exactly.

Marcus Ohanesian (11:24.92)
And most people like myself, just the general, you know, general Joe will call me, like have no idea. So, so, absolutely not.

Karin (11:30.506)
Yeah, right. Nor do you want to have any idea. So like when I have to deal with a lawyer for myself or my business, I don’t want the nitty gritty details. I want to feel that it’s handled. I want to feel confident that it’s done. And same when people come to me, when they’re hiring an agency, I’m not gonna get into the nitty gritty, especially of like what SEO does. So, and I can tell,

Marcus Ohanesian (11:42.396)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (11:45.863)
Exactly.

Marcus Ohanesian (11:53.387)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (11:59.306)
and I’m sure you have these conversations all the time, when they’re having conversations and they’re kind of talking to different agencies and they’ve had that conversation recently with a different agency. And so they’ve written down pages of notes and it’s like, okay, I was told to ask you the following 14 questions. I don’t even know what these words are that I’m saying right now. And I’m like, let’s back up for a minute. We’re not gonna do that.

Marcus Ohanesian (12:08.283)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (12:17.127)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (12:22.987)
Yeah. Yeah, they’re just regurgitating info there. That doesn’t mean anything to them, you know?

Karin (12:28.542)
Right. It doesn’t. It doesn’t mean anything to them. And they don’t even know why they’re asking me. And they just feel like they’re sort of taking my temperature to see if it sounds like I know what I’m talking about. So what do you do when you have those conversations? How do you kind of back up and redirect that conversation?

Marcus Ohanesian (12:37.587)
He he.

Marcus Ohanesian (12:49.255)
Yeah, so we get that a lot, you’re right. As a web agency, we get clients kind of all over the map, all different skill set and expertise, and some are technical, some are not technical. There’s no right or wrong answer. We’ve worked with lots of different dynamics there. What really sets us apart is, we’re not selling our service to you, we’re selling a solution, right? We’re solution providers, and we actually take a more engulfed approach. So we’re very selective with who we have as clients intentionally.

Karin (13:07.97)
Right. Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (13:18.511)
And with that, we’d like to really involve ourselves in your business and really ask the general business questions, not even website related. So what do you do? How big is your team? What are your strengths? And kind of really dive into it. And obviously, what are you using for this tool and all that stuff, the technical stuff is great. But we really wanna understand what your objectives are as a business because if your goals are, hey, our online marketing presence sucks.

Karin (13:26.026)
Right. Yeah.

Karin (13:41.471)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (13:46.627)
We have an outdated website, great. We can make it look cool and pretty and fun and whatever, but it’s not gonna convert people to fill out your contact form or download a white paper or reach out to you, so that’s technically a conversion if that’s the measurement that we’re using here, right? So what’s the strategy there? And that’s one thing that we bring to the table is we wanna learn about your business and then we wanna learn about what your business goals are, why you even have a website in the first place, because some people say, well, you know, it’s 2023.

Karin (13:54.954)
Right? Yes.

Karin (14:00.338)
Right, exactly.

Karin (14:09.088)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (14:13.483)
We need to just have a better looking website because maybe they aren’t even mobile responsive at this point or something bad. But at that point we like to kind of unpack what their end goal is. So and what their strategy is. Do they have a blog? Are they generating inbound traffic? Or what their strategy is there because that kind of determines our recommendations.

Karin (14:15.753)
Yes.

Right.

Karin (14:24.187)
Why? Yes.

Karin (14:29.343)
Right, right.

Karin (14:33.822)
Yes, okay. So it sounds like we have kind of got derailed talking about strategy, but honestly, everything that you’re saying, I feel like is the foundation for the problems that these cluttered websites are having. And so I feel like everything that you just detailed is the answer to fixing these cluttered websites. So it all, I firmly believe it all comes back to strategy and goals.

Marcus Ohanesian (14:49.652)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (15:02.778)
And when you don’t have those, that’s when your website becomes a mess. That’s when your brain becomes a mess too, because you’re just going in a million different directions and it’s clear on the website. So the website is just sort of a symptom of all of that. So let’s get into, because I feel like this is gonna keep tying back to everything that you just said a minute ago about having that strategy, talking to your clients about having what their goals are, why are they coming to you, and then tying everything back to that.

Okay, so let’s dig into, let’s start with, let’s start at the top, let’s start with navigation. What are some of the problems that you see, like navigation, including that whole sort of header section and the logo part where, you know, we typically put that logo in the top left, navigation in the top right. What do you see there in terms of mistakes, things people could do better, kind of best practices, that kind of stuff?

Marcus Ohanesian (15:43.701)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (15:48.427)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (15:58.064)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s a lot. So we’ll zoom into the navigation first and then zoom out to the logo into maybe some utility icons that may be happening in the top right. I’m gonna obviously generalize just from a website design perspective. So with navigation, obviously, the obvious one is too cluttered, right? You’re trying to stuff too many things in a small real estate. And without intent. So there’s ways to have a big navigation.

Karin (16:08.51)
Of course. Yeah, sure.

Karin (16:17.698)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (16:23.219)
but you can obviously do that with a thing called a mega menu, which is something that expands when you hover over or even just a simple drop-down and indentation and the UI and the design can help look clean even though you’re presenting a lot of information upfront. So that’s first and foremost is a strategic kind of mindful and intentful intentional approach to navigation.

Karin (16:36.488)
Yes, yes.

Karin (16:45.11)
But once again, this has to tie back to your goals. Because if you don’t know what your main purpose, that people right away, your number one main purpose for your website should be very clear in that navigation. Because that is the first thing people are gonna see right after your logo.

Marcus Ohanesian (16:47.967)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (17:02.843)
Right. So that’s actually to prove that point even more, that’s our very first step in our process for a website redesign is we do it to process called the information architecture. It’s literally just, what is your site map look like? What’s the blueprint for this website? So we, I’ve been making this analogy for years, uh, with a website and a house, right? So you can’t build a house if you don’t have the blueprint, right? We don’t know how it’s going to look, how big the things are, all that. Well, the site map is the blueprint for your website. So we need to talk about the architecture, not only

Karin (17:21.347)
Yes. Exactly.

Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (17:32.447)
how many links will actually be in there, but also that kind of ties into your content direction. So what content will go on those specific pages and that will start to obviously dictate the design, which will dictate the development, et cetera, et cetera. So it all starts with strategy and architecture of your navigation, and that will dictate everything else sort of in the project. So that navigation, you know, desktop, obviously, we’re thinking about a small, thin horizontal strip probably, but you gotta think on the mobile experience now.

Karin (17:38.54)
Right.

Karin (17:45.526)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (18:02.663)
where 75% of users probably, I just made that number up, but it’s a high number, are on mobile. Yeah, many, you should be looking at your Google Analytics obviously to have a data-driven approach, right? To know those numbers.

Karin (18:06.334)
Yeah. Many. Yeah.

Karin (18:13.598)
Right. Well, and this is going to vary based on practice area for sure. Because I know that we’ve worked with criminal defense attorneys where they have DUI clients who are coming right out of jail and 95% of their clicks are coming from mobile. But then there’s something like an estate planning attorney where it’s maybe 50-50 or less. So.

Marcus Ohanesian (18:20.693)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (18:29.333)
Hehehe

Marcus Ohanesian (18:32.799)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (18:41.438)
if they have an older clientele or whatever the case might be. Knowing who your clientele are kind of dictates whether they’re gonna be on a desktop mobile tablet, whatever the case might be. But it’s usually pretty obvious and you don’t even have to necessarily, like it’s good to look at the analytics, but oftentimes you know in your gut what that answer is.

Marcus Ohanesian (18:41.577)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (18:47.208)
I’m gonna go.

Marcus Ohanesian (19:00.807)
Yeah, for sure. Yep, so I guess even to back up more is looking at your analytics first. If you have a current website online, dive into Google Analytics, just hopefully you have that as a baseline metric because it’s free and it’s been installed probably, hopefully. Yeah, and you should be looking at that to kind of dictate this redesigned project and know which pages are the most trafficked, which pages have the highest bounce rate. There’s so many metrics to look at.

Karin (19:14.338)
Should be. Yeah.

Karin (19:25.634)
Totally.

Marcus Ohanesian (19:25.839)
But that’s going to dictate that architecture navigation and ultimately the strategy of this new redesign that we’re doing. Go ahead.

Karin (19:34.274)
So next question was, let’s pretend like we’re, we are a law firm owner and we’ve got this website and we’ve had it for a few years and we have this kind of gut feeling that it might not be great, but we don’t really know how to evaluate it. So how would you as that lawyer who has this website, how would you, if you’re looking at it, you’re like, I don’t know, maybe it’s okay. It’s, you know, it’s.

Marcus Ohanesian (19:52.723)
Mm.

Karin (20:03.37)
you know, kind of looks fine and whatever. What are some red flags that you would like guide them through looking at to kind of evaluate if there’s problems?

Marcus Ohanesian (20:14.311)
Yeah, good question. So a good use case here is Craigslist. Craigslist has not been redesigned for years because it does… Because it does something so well and it’s so ugly. It’s literally been the same design since, I don’t know, late 90s, early 2000s, whatever. But, you know, don’t break it if it’s not broken. Is that the phrase, right? So, you know, don’t try… Yeah, don’t try to fix something if it’s not broken. I think that’s the phrase. Anyway…

Karin (20:24.875)
Yes, so ugly.

Karin (20:29.102)
So ugly.

Karin (20:36.898)
Don’t knock it or something. Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (20:42.459)
Simplicity is key there because that website still converts. People are still posting on there. People are still responding to ads. People still go there, right? So that’s the use case there. But to answer your question, a site can look good, but it may not function properly. Like I said, you may not be getting the contact form submissions that you’re looking for, or the email list signups, or whatever it may be, whatever that goal is, phone calls, whatever that goal is that we have to determine at the beginning of the project, you know? So again,

Karin (20:47.03)
Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Karin (20:55.87)
Yeah. Right.

Karin (21:00.832)
Right.

Karin (21:04.342)
phone calls. Yuck.

Karin (21:09.772)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (21:12.191)
Whenever there’s gut and personal kind of thrown in as words, I always say, don’t make it that, make it data, make it a data-driven approach and looking at Google Analytics, look at Hotjar, look at all the tools that you’ve implemented, hopefully, at this point, to review the past three months, six months, year, and start to see the patterns. It’s just gonna pop out at you, you’re gonna see it. And reach out to a freelancer or an agency like us to help you with that too, because we’re gonna see it in different lights. But we can help kinda…

Karin (21:19.102)
Yes.

Karin (21:31.436)
Yeah.

Karin (21:38.538)
Yeah. Exactly.

Marcus Ohanesian (21:42.031)
extract the key points and do a summary in a way of, here’s what happened on your website for the past six months. So this will determine do you need a website design and because you can point to the data versus, well, my CEO, my boss, he thinks it just doesn’t look good or he… yeah… yeah.

Karin (21:48.289)
Yeah.

Karin (21:57.73)
They’re tired. Yeah, they’re kind of bored with it. Yeah, exactly. So what are some of the things, like when I first get an inquiry and I’m setting up a sales call with someone and I click over to their website, there are some things right away that are huge problems. So I’ll give you one example from last week. Someone reached out and I could tell right away that the site was at least 10 years old, like just really super old graphics and style and everything. But the biggest problem,

Marcus Ohanesian (22:23.464)
Uh huh.

Karin (22:26.742)
was that there was a little blog section over on one side and it was full of, it had been hacked. So it was full of like Russian posts and some porn spam and this is a law firm. Like it was so bad. So, oh, for a second it cut out. So I just, sorry, I paused there. I’ll cut that out. But so anyway, so that was one thing. Like right away I was like, oh my gosh.

Marcus Ohanesian (22:39.818)
Yeah.

Karin (22:52.506)
You have a problem. This is not just me saying, oh, it’s not pretty. This is a big problem. So what are some of the other things, maybe not that major and serious, but some other things that you notice right away that are problematic on a website?

Marcus Ohanesian (22:53.724)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (23:06.211)
Yeah, I mean that’s definitely an extreme case and that just shows lack of care at the end of the day. It’s like you’re not even looking at your website to see. Yeah. The other is maybe another obvious one of your website’s just not mobile friendly and I can’t believe I’m even saying that still in 2023, but the hard truth is that there are a lot of websites that still are not mobile friendly that you have to zoom in to see things because it’s not responding to your device and screen size. So that’s a that’s a huge red flag to say like they haven’t even updated their website and

Karin (23:08.35)
Yeah, seriously. You’re not paying attention. Yeah, totally.

Karin (23:18.944)
Yes.

I know.

Karin (23:29.994)
Yes. Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (23:35.579)
at least 10 years plus at this point, you know?

Karin (23:36.886)
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, easily. That’s come on, what people, your website, you need to for sure be checking on it. If you aren’t checking on it, you need to have someone scanning and regularly checking on it on a daily basis. Like you need to make sure that it’s not being hacked. And you have to do an update at least every two to three years, like that’s just, you know, and it doesn’t have to be an entire overhaul, but this is just standard. You are running a business. It’s like, what is it like? It’s like,

I can’t think of a good example. It’s like not having your lights on when people… Okay, good.

Marcus Ohanesian (24:11.643)
I got one. It’s like having a car but not changing your oil when it’s due. Why would you not take care of your car that you spent all this money on and updating it or buying a new car?

Karin (24:16.614)
Yes, yeah, exactly.

Karin (24:21.374)
Exactly. Yeah, but then that car is directly like driving the business to your website too. Like, you know, it’s the car that is the most important first impression of your web, of your business too. So yeah, I’ll think of an analogy. Somehow I’m still hoping to tie it back to sandwiches. We got to do that at some point. It’s like having a sandwich without bread almost like it’s, you know, yeah. I mean, I like a wrap from time to time, but

Marcus Ohanesian (24:28.405)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (24:33.867)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (24:40.383)
Mmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (24:47.968)
Oh, yeah. Sure. Yeah, you could go open face too, you know. Just go with one at the bottom. Yeah.

Karin (24:50.978)
Bread is where it’s at, I think. Totally, just the one. Balance it out, make sure that the quantities are all appropriate. So, exactly. So speaking of space and quantities and appropriate amount of ingredients, let’s talk about white space and kind of having somewhere for your eye to rest. This, oh, this is such a point of contention.

Marcus Ohanesian (24:59.752)
Yeah, watch the carbs.

Marcus Ohanesian (25:07.955)
Mm.

Marcus Ohanesian (25:14.076)
Uh huh.

Karin (25:19.458)
for so many of my clients, especially because they tend to do what you were talking about earlier, which is just cram all the words in and say every possible version of what they’re trying to say over and over. So talk about white space and why that’s important.

Marcus Ohanesian (25:33.942)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (25:37.095)
White space adds breathing space with, and it makes the design look more breathable and not as cluttered, which breeds sort of that trust that there’s a clean, minimal design there. It doesn’t, maybe not even minimal. You can have a, you can have a busy design, but it doesn’t have to be scrunched in, in things almost touching each other as far as headings with fonts too close to the body copy. Having an image be too flush to the text that’s around it.

for like a blog post or something. Maybe this isn’t relevant for this, but it’s somewhat. Consistency breeds trust is a quote that I’ve read. I don’t even know who does it, so I can’t attribute it to them. But it’s a good one in the sense that consistency is great, but also consistent design. So kind of spitballing off of the white space is like that goes towards your design and your theme of your website. But you have other pages. So you have a five to seven page like marketing website, right?

Karin (26:15.511)
Yes.

It’s okay, it’s a good one.

Karin (26:24.448)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (26:36.351)
brochure kind of bare bones basic site. But if your headings look like one font in one style on the homepage, and then as you get into the about page or the services or the contact or something, they’re a different font at a different size with different stuff happening around it, that’s inconsistent. And that to me looks messy. So it looks amateur, right? So just like the steakhouse analogy or any like upper caliber and tier of something, whether it’s the restaurant industry or car, right? So I…

Karin (26:53.52)
Yeah. Yep. Yes, very amateur.

Karin (27:02.03)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (27:04.819)
We always talk about brands and stuff just like, you know, the, the Mercedes Benz BMW, the higher, more polished and shiny brands, they had a different website design and look and feel versus the more approachable ones, maybe even the more like crunchy hippie Subaru kind of vibe. You know, it’s all branding at the end of the day, but all of that tells a certain message even subconsciously as I’m looking at the website and I’m kind of absorbing.

Karin (27:17.934)
100%.

Karin (27:22.814)
Yeah.

Karin (27:26.752)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (27:33.455)
how everything is designed, laid out, the colors, the structural layout of everything. That all plays into that.

Karin (27:39.646)
Yeah, I love the analogy, I guess not really analogy, but I like the phrase that space is luxury. Space is luxurious. So when you think not just in ads and marketing, but think about the more real estate space you have, like we all spend more money to have more space around us. So a larger hotel room is going to be more expensive. So it’s luxury.

Marcus Ohanesian (27:58.431)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (28:09.422)
it’s a higher cost, higher value. And so when you do the opposite of that space and you cram things in, it all of a sudden feels tight, but it also feels cheap and it feels the opposite of luxury. So if you are conveying this brand that is exclusive, luxurious, you are an expert,

Marcus Ohanesian (28:21.223)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah

Karin (28:34.366)
and you’re conveying your expertise and you are trying to speak to even, not necessarily super high net worth people, but even just people who think they deserve a high value lawyer, but then your website looks like you’re selling used cars. It’s a complete disconnect. And like you said, it’s gonna confuse people and then they’re suddenly gonna think, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m just gonna back away. I can’t make this decision right now.

Marcus Ohanesian (28:47.979)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (28:52.624)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (28:59.881)
Yeah.

Yeah, it’s true. I saw, I follow a bunch of design sites on Instagram and all that and stuff. And there was someone that took a lot of the logos of all these luxury brands that are out in the world, even like Apple and stuff. And they just took the letter spacing and scrunched it all together and didn’t expand it. And it completely blew my mind of just that little tweak and the image and the perception of that logo completely changed. So.

Karin (29:19.242)
Oh.

Marcus Ohanesian (29:27.551)
taking that and kind of thinking of it in the broader terms of when you’re scrunching stuff into space without that white padding around it in that breathing space, it gets interpreted differently.

Karin (29:30.411)
Yes.

Karin (29:37.502)
Yes. Oh, that would be cool to see just because we’re so used to seeing certain brands and their logos. And when you all of a sudden see them wrong, done wrongly, that’s all it just is so jarring. And so think about the white space in terms of how jarring that’s going to be versus and your competitors are probably not doing this very well.

Marcus Ohanesian (29:52.831)
Yeah.

Karin (30:02.194)
So if you come across and do this in a really artful way and it conveys this elevated experience, all of a sudden it’s one of those things that people are going to say, oh, I don’t know what it was on your website, but I just knew, I just had this feeling. And as soon as you start hearing those kinds of comments, that’s when it’s the design. When it’s like you don’t necessarily as the

Marcus Ohanesian (30:12.139)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (30:27.369)
Yeah.

Karin (30:30.414)
client know what it was, but I do. I know that it was designed. I know that we put a lot of intention into all of those choices to make you feel that way. It doesn’t just happen. It doesn’t just kind of appear like a fairy. It has to be very thoughtfully put together. All right, so what else in terms of user experience? Can you talk about like what happens for conversion?

Marcus Ohanesian (30:39.764)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (30:44.937)
Yeah.

Karin (30:59.127)
Actually, before we get to conversion, let’s talk about fonts and color choices.

Marcus Ohanesian (31:00.049)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I wanted to go back a little bit to like branding as a whole, which kind of ties into fonts and colors and stuff. So we talked, we talked about like the navigation component and that’s like, you know, one very small piece, but heavily important piece of the puzzle. But let’s zoom out for a second here. If your logo sucks and your logo is not translatable, meaning it doesn’t scale well.

Karin (31:06.718)
Okay.

Karin (31:16.862)
Yeah. Okay.

Marcus Ohanesian (31:25.955)
So you could have a bad font choice that some, you know, your brother’s sixth cousin did. And then you got, yeah. And then, or you went on, I don’t want to, you know, bad mouth Fiverr or any of those sites, but you went on a site like that, I’ll say, and got one for really cheap, meaning like price was the contention point. Then yeah, then you’re gonna get what you pay for and you’re gonna start to realize the more that your business scales, you don’t have a logo that can scale with you. So.

Karin (31:26.176)
Yes.

Karin (31:32.234)
in his basement.

Karin (31:39.998)
Yeah. Yep.

Driver, yeah.

Karin (31:53.408)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (31:54.707)
The fonts are super important to kind of tie into not only the website design, but having your logo be designed well from the start, meaning getting it in a vector file. So you can use it for web and print, which is huge. Second is just the choice of fonts, like the actual design of the logo, making sure that it scales down from, I always say a business card to a billboard. You know, you can scale it from smallest to largest view and it’s going to look crystal clear and it’s going to translate well. So think about your website.

Karin (32:17.354)
Yes.

Karin (32:22.667)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (32:23.723)
If you’re scaling it down to maybe a 400 pixel rectangle or square or even smaller, hopefully your tagline in there or even maybe not, but your main font can be legible at that small size. So that’s first and foremost is make sure you have your branding in place. And because of that, your colors will be kind of dictated from your logo, or you can obviously look at like complimentary colors to use as like accents on the buttons or something like that on the website.

Karin (32:38.154)
Yeah, right.

Marcus Ohanesian (32:51.847)
And then you’re gonna wanna use like heading fonts. So a couple, two different trains of thoughts here is take your logo fonts. And if people wanna stay consistent, you can take the logo font and use that for your headings as well, but then have like a complimentary body font. You know, use like a serif for the heading and use a sans serif. So maybe like, you know, for the non font nerds, we’ll use a Times New Roman for the heading. And yeah, don’t, because it’s not gonna look good, but that style.

Karin (33:15.058)
Ugh, please don’t. No, yeah, yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (33:20.243)
That style of font and then like a Helvetica slash Ariel as like the body because that’ll be nice. But not those, but that style to be scalable and legible, you know? So it has that contrast, you know? So your whole website doesn’t look like a newspaper in Times New Roman. And it also doesn’t look plain and boring in all of Ariel or Helvetica. Right. Not even mentioning Comic Sans in there. We won’t go down that route.

Karin (33:24.03)
Yes. But not those. Yeah.

Karin (33:36.735)
Exactly.

Karin (33:40.406)
like a kindergarten teacher. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Oh gosh, you know what people are going to walk away from this episode? Marcus told me to use Times New Roman and Ariel. So that’s why I’m like trying to be very clear that we are talking about the style, not those exact fonts. Do not use Times and Ariel and under no circumstances should you use Comic Sans or Papyrus. Papyrus is the bane of my existence. I cannot stand that font. And you know, there’s, have you seen the SNL?

Marcus Ohanesian (33:52.576)
I did not.

Marcus Ohanesian (33:58.4)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (34:03.467)
Please, please do.

Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (34:13.883)
Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, it’s legendary. Yeah.

Karin (34:14.674)
Oh my gosh. Okay. So good. So yeah, check that out. We may link to that one in the show notes cause it’s so good, but font choice is important, but not times or Arial. Yes. Who knows? Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (34:19.019)
I’m going to go to bed.

Marcus Ohanesian (34:22.683)
not those specific font choices. There’s a lot of other good looking fonts, and that’s why you should hire a designer who knows typography. Super important there. So tying back into the website side of things, you wanna find complementary fonts, and ideally if you’re working with a designer, they would give you a web style guide. That’s the ideal dream to get a file that says, here’s all the fonts from headings one through six. Here are what the button should look like.

Karin (34:32.002)
Yes.

Karin (34:40.6)
Yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (34:51.519)
on active state, on hover state, here what the form field should look like for a contact form or an email list sign up, basically setting the ground rules, again, the blueprint, but it’s the visual blueprint of how things should look from a visual standpoint.

Karin (35:04.158)
And that style guide ideally should come from the person who did your branding and your logo. Yeah, so that like if it’s done correctly and well, and you’ve paid the correct amounts, a style guide should be the part of what’s included there so that they’re defining all of those details. And like you said, when that happens and I get one of those, I’m like, oh my gosh, like.

Marcus Ohanesian (35:09.083)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Karin (35:27.774)
You know, the clouds just parted and I see, I hear like singing and stuff. It’s so nice because all of a sudden, you know, right out of the gate that the design is on track and it’s going to be nice and tight and it’s going to be, it’s going to look great and it’s all going to tie together. And it was thought it thoughtful, thought it, I don’t know what that word is.

Marcus Ohanesian (35:31.301)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (35:45.919)
Yeah, it was thoughtful for sure. But it also, like you said, it shows that you care about your branding and your design. A lot of industries may do not creative work in the sense of like it’s not a very visually sexy kind of industry. So they think that the logo has to be as plain and not even care about that. But it’s such a lost point. It drops.

Karin (35:54.804)
Exactly.

Karin (36:09.89)
Yes!

Karin (36:13.515)
It really is.

Marcus Ohanesian (36:14.395)
it drops short because when I see a company that stands out just a tiny bit, you know, not so much where it’s alarming, but kind of has their own character and their own personality, they’re differentiating themselves that way, you know, and it also shows that they care.

Karin (36:30.006)
Right, and it always starts with a logo. It always starts with a really nice, clean, sharp logo that really compliments and works well with all of the other elements on the website. Okay, so then you want it to lead into conversion and where kind of cluttered websites, I feel like, and I’m guessing you do too, oftentimes when I’ll get,

Marcus Ohanesian (36:31.889)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (36:57.054)
where people say, oh, our website doesn’t do anything. It just sits there. It doesn’t really, you know, it’s not really important to us. Usually, first of all, I kind of respond in sort of a shock. Like it, that’s not the way to just live. That’s like saying, oh, you know, our house is on fire. It’s, you know, it’s a little smoky, but, but that’s not the way to, that’s not sustainable. Your website should be doing something. It should be.

Marcus Ohanesian (37:04.243)
Okay.

Marcus Ohanesian (37:20.542)
Yeah.

Karin (37:26.73)
a functioning member of your team 24 hours a day. And oftentimes there are some significant issues related to some of these clutter issues that we’re talking about. So where do you think, how do you think this all ties together with clutter, design issues and conversion?

Marcus Ohanesian (37:30.388)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (37:39.499)
Hehehe

Marcus Ohanesian (37:48.015)
Yeah, a couple good points there. So if your website’s cluttered, if you have a lot going on, the messaging is convoluted, right? That’s not gonna lead to someone wanting to talk to you. To me, that doesn’t sit well. If I’m confused, especially the more that I stay on your website, the more confused that I get, that’s a problem.

I’m gonna just X out. I’m gonna move on to the next person. Life’s too short to be sitting there reading a website, trying to figure it out. So, especially in this new process, it’s my first time on your website, I’m looking for someone to take care of this problem that I have. You do that, but somehow you’re not telling me that, and that’s a problem. So, if I’m getting that on first impression, imagine how I’m gonna feel if I was giving you money and you were working on a case or a problem. That doesn’t make me feel comfortable and want to give you the money.

Karin (38:12.428)
Right.

Karin (38:23.446)
Right, yep.

Karin (38:31.948)
Exactly.

Marcus Ohanesian (38:34.707)
So that’s how it kind of ties into, obviously the biggest question to kind of zoom out again is what does conversion look like for you? A website should convert period. So what is, how do you define conversion for your website? So I know in the e-commerce world, obviously it’s, I got an order, I got a sale, great. But some examples obviously that you may or may not be familiar with is filling out a contact form, right? Like reaching out, signing up for an email newsletter, getting a free consultation, maybe that’s an offering

Karin (38:34.849)
Right.

Karin (38:57.718)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (39:04.711)
as a call to action button, because hopefully your website has a call to action button, right? Something that you are asking of your users, right? To click on. So schedule free consultation. And that could be another contact form, right? That gets routed to the right person. Or it could be a Calendly sign up, or a HubSpot meeting link or whatever, that they can book it right there. Perfect. You can easily track conversions off that. Or are you offering some sort of white paper, like a PDF, an ebook?

Karin (39:09.506)
Seriously.

Karin (39:13.066)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (39:33.735)
something as like a lead magnet essentially, to say, hey, we did this PDF, give us your email, right? We can track the clicks, we can track the submissions, and that’s the conversion rate there. But if you just have a basic website, also you just wanna track how many people are clicking on the phone number to call you on mobile.

Karin (39:50.27)
So I was gonna say, oftentimes it is just a phone call, but you have to be asking them. So, you know, how did you hear, how did you get my name? How did you hear of us? You need to know that people are coming from the website or a Google search, because how do you know if the, otherwise it’s just, you’re in a black hole and you don’t have the data. And if you don’t have the data, then you can’t do anything from there. Like you’re, it’s just such a loss.

Marcus Ohanesian (39:56.575)
Mm-hmm.

Marcus Ohanesian (40:00.992)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (40:18.442)
So I have a lot of people I’ve talked to also who are like, yeah, I forget to ask or whatever it’s like, ah, you’re killing me. Ha ha ha.

Marcus Ohanesian (40:24.687)
Yeah, yeah. Again, if you asked, hey, how did we get our clients? How do we get our clients? I hope you have an answer. I personally started doing that in the past couple of years because I was a culprit of not knowing and I started to track all of our leads and customers. So now I can just pull up an air table database that we have and look at the report and say, well, 50% comes here, 30% here. Hopefully you can do the same. And hopefully you remember to at least ask that or send out an email with a questionnaire or whatever the

Karin (40:33.227)
Yeah.

Karin (40:37.535)
Yeah.

Karin (40:51.884)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (40:52.267)
tool and method and medium is, it doesn’t matter, just as long as you’re getting that piece of data, because that is also a piece of data that can drive your decision making as far as future marketing.

Karin (41:01.806)
Right. And honestly, like it’s usually the first part of the call where it’s like, oh, okay, you schedule a call with me. Um, and they’ll often say, oh, I, um, I was on your website or I did a Google search or for me for a long time, it was, I read some article that you wrote over on this, you know, website or whatever. And so I kept hearing that over and over and over. I read this article and then whatever. And so I instantly, I didn’t even have to ask. It was like, but when I ha I haven’t kind of what lawyers would call an intake

Marcus Ohanesian (41:31.391)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (41:31.534)
and it is a checkbox that I have to go through and they are either telling me that or I’m asking so that I don’t miss that piece. Like you have a system for that. It’s not that hard. Just have a form that you fill out even if it’s on a piece of paper where you are going through and making sure that you are asking the things that are important. I mean, come on. It’s like, get their phone number, get their name. Basic, basic stuff, but so many people are not doing that. And…

Marcus Ohanesian (41:50.463)
Absolutely. Yep.

Karin (41:58.782)
If you’re not doing it, you’re not alone. You’re definitely among many, but let’s make that better. If you get nothing else from this episode, get that. Okay, so before we go to the book review, anything else that you feel really critical in terms of cluttered websites, conversion, I feel like we’ve covered a lot already. So anything else that you wanted to cover in that whole world of visual strain.

Marcus Ohanesian (42:28.135)
Um, yeah, we have covered a lot. I’d say just in general honing in on the strategy more. Um, I guess I’ll reiterate what I said earlier is, is that strategy. Um, and again, paying attention to not only just visual clutter, right? But content clutter is a thing. Uh, so, you know, having that strategy again, starting with the architecture and the blueprint for the website that will dictate, um, you know, your content strategy and a lot of times.

we’re using it as a reset. You know, getting a website redesign is a chance to zoom out, take a deep breath and say, all right, we’re gonna build this from the ground up again. Now’s the time to look at the analytics. Do we even need this page? Do we even need this whole entire section? Are we getting visitors? Are we getting traffic there? How is this resonating with our users? Most of the time, it’s probably not. So take it out. And you can even just start to rearrange things, you know, and simplify and have more of a…

a top level to parent and child level and you start to kind of get that architecture down. So content clutter is real. It’s a real thing. Not only on the page, in architecture as well.

Karin (43:35.978)
And Google doesn’t like it either. And this is surprising because in the past, it was like, just throw as much content as you can on a website and just keep cramming it all in there. But now what we’re seeing is by taking some of those unused pages that nobody goes to and removing that and clearing your website out and making it more streamlined, Google likes that better too. So it does improve your rankings as well overall. Okay, so it is time for the book review.

Marcus Ohanesian (43:55.467)
Mm-hmm. All right.

Marcus Ohanesian (44:01.705)
Yeah.

Karin (44:05.238)
And if you haven’t visited our website, there is an awesome library there that all of the guests on the show recommend a business book usually related to what we’re talking about. And so we’re now over 100 episodes, so there’s tons of books on the library that if you’re looking for something like good to read, you can first listen to the episode and figure out like why we were talking about that book and then.

go through the library. So Marcus, what’s the book that you were gonna add and recommend today?

Marcus Ohanesian (44:37.011)
This one was called Stories That Stick by Kendra Hall. I read it a while ago. So I’m gonna try to rack my brain of why I like it. And it literally has stuck with me. So the title works. But she did a really good job of kind of unpacking like the framework of the consistent set of actions basically that will tell the story. So we talked about content, we talked about design and branding and website user experience. All of that tells a story.

Karin (44:49.684)
Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (45:07.003)
Right? And some people will say, that’s branding, right? Branding tells a story. Yeah. You know, that’s brand. How’s the quote go? I think it’s like branding is what people say about you when you leave the room.

Karin (45:07.146)
Yes, yes.

Karin (45:17.13)
Right, yes.

Marcus Ohanesian (45:18.815)
for, I don’t know if it was Steve jobs or someone famous at that. I’m really bad with attribution of quotes. But yeah. Yeah.

Karin (45:23.234)
That’s okay. That’s all right. We can give it to Steve Jobs, but I have heard that one many, many times too. And I think it’s so true. Cause it’s basically your reputation.

Marcus Ohanesian (45:32.251)
Yeah, exactly. I think it was Jeff Bezos at Amazon maybe. But either way, regardless. So she’s a really good storyteller and she kind of breaks it down into like these four different stories that you can use to kind of like captivate and differentiate yourself. So besides just what storytelling is, right, the emotional connection that you get from words that you read, as well as like the emotional attachment of colors, right? So there’s a reason why like.

Karin (45:35.346)
Okay. Some guy.

Marcus Ohanesian (45:59.367)
Banks use blue because it’s very trustworthy and like the whole color theory stuff, right? So there’s that from an emotional standpoint, but then there’s also ways to kind of craft up the content. So there’s value story, the founder story, the purpose story and the customer story. And they all have different motives. Value is to convince customers what you provide. The founder is to persuade investors or customers, your organization is worth the investment. The purpose is to align and…

Karin (46:01.758)
Yes. Yeah.

Marcus Ohanesian (46:25.907)
inspire your employees and internal customers. And then the customer story is to those who use your product or service to kind of share your authentic experiences with others. So it’s definitely like a skill, right? It’s almost like literally telling a story, right? There’s ways to talk and accentuate and pause and, you know, public speaking and all that. You’re telling a story and there’s ways to articulate certain things to have more of an emotional connection or less of an emotional connection. And this book really kind of hit the nail on the head of

different ways to craft up your own story. So from a branding lens, but also the delivery of it.

Karin (46:56.927)
Yeah.

Karin (47:00.306)
Yeah, well, and I think in terms of design and clutter, once you start telling these stories, whether it’s stories of the work that you’ve done or stories of your clients and the cases, obviously, like within respectful privacy and all of that stuff, but that’s what connects with people right away. So when you’re describing in a design sense how you’ve done this work in a storytelling visual way,

Marcus Ohanesian (47:28.459)
Mm-hmm.

Karin (47:28.47)
versus just like slapping an image up and kind of saying, I do this kind of law and I’m in this city. That doesn’t really tell a story. It’s really not, you know, it’s not very compelling at all. But once it all of a sudden is kind of telling that story, then all of a sudden your visitor sticks around longer, they click through, like your results just go through the roof. And I will say the design in a storytelling way,

Marcus Ohanesian (47:41.78)
Yeah.

Karin (47:57.006)
is more difficult because you have to think through the whole path of that. But when it’s done right and well, that’s what works. So kind of bringing it back to the idea of design and clutter and, you know, keeping it clear and succinct. If you’ve got a story there, it makes it, it does make the language and the words easier, but then you’ve got to kind of tie in all the design elements. But yeah, like I said, it just makes it

Marcus Ohanesian (48:06.315)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Karin (48:26.13)
when you feel like you’ve gone through a website and you’ve got that story, first of all you’re going to remember that more and then you’re more likely to convert too. Awesome! Well, you know, a minute ago you kind of summarized what you said earlier and so I was going to ask you what a big takeaway is that you’d like people to get from the show, but you did already kind of…

Marcus Ohanesian (48:35.976)
Absolutely.

Karin (48:48.066)
Talk about sort of coming back to strategy. Any other sort of overarching idea or theme in terms of like mistakes and clutter on websites that you’d like people to take away from this episode?

Marcus Ohanesian (49:02.275)
Without repeating myself or saying more negative things, I’d say the opposite is just oversimplify things. Don’t try to do too much. And I’m generalizing it again. But start small, especially if it’s your first site, or a redesign. Again, scaling things back and go for simplicity with more of a true message and more of a meaningful message than trying to over-message, I guess.

Karin (49:09.106)
Yes. Yeah.

Karin (49:29.982)
Yeah. And think, look at some of these examples of these major companies that we’re talking about. You know, Apple, of course, is the most obvious, but they don’t have paragraphs and paragraphs of text on their website. And there’s probably someone in their organization that, you know, that’s probably the lawyer that is handing them that much text to put on the website. And then the designers are like,

Marcus Ohanesian (49:30.387)
That’s a word.

Marcus Ohanesian (49:52.487)
Yeah. Yup.

Karin (49:55.943)
And so try to pare it down and I will say it’s often uncomfortable for lawyers and the gut reaction is, oh, there’s so much more and often when I’m going through design that’s very succinct, it often tries to get blown up but resist that urge. Try to keep it really clean and succinct so that it just comes through so much better.

Marcus Ohanesian (50:23.931)
Mm-hmm. Agreed. That’s a tool.

Karin (50:24.946)
Awesome. Exactly. Alright, I’m going to try to pronounce your last name. Marcus Ohan- Ohanishan. No, that’s not it. No? Hahaha. Okay, so I’m going to try to pronounce your last name.

Marcus Ohanesian (50:34.431)
Close, close. I’ve heard worse.

Karin (50:38.702)
Tell me again. Oh, Hanesha, I was not even really close. Oh, Hanesha, Marcus Ohanishan is the owner of Perfect Evolution. And this was, I love talking about design stuff. I could do this all day long, but we’re gonna kind of try to keep this to a minimal normal length. But thank you so much for being here. And obviously the show notes, all that good stuff’s on the website. Thanks again.

Marcus Ohanesian (50:39.855)
Oh, Haneshan. Oh.

Marcus Ohanesian (50:51.391)
same.

Marcus Ohanesian (51:03.148)
Thank you for having me.