Some would describe millennial audiences as difficult. Challenging. Perhaps even stubborn.
In reality however, a more appropriate adjective would be ‘unique’. After all, just because something goes against the norm doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Or to be interpreted as problematic.
Still, there’s no disputing the fact that marketing to millennials can pose a problem for those who continue to follow more conventional marketing practices. Which in some instances serve as quite enormous turn-offs for millennial audiences.
The following examples of which being perhaps the most prevalent of all:
1. Sluggish Performance
Three seconds – the longest the average millennial is willing to wait around for any given website or internal page to load. Patience is fast-becoming a forgotten virtue among modern consumer audiences in general. Meaning that if you can’t satisfy your prospects with instant gratification, you’re already on a downward trajectory. Whatever it takes to deliver a smooth, seamless and seriously-fast user-experience, you need to make it happen.
2. Use of Flash
It shouldn’t really need saying by this stage in time, but the use of Flash in websites is best avoided. It may have been seen as revolutionary in 1996, but it isn’t 1996 anymore. And nor are millennials willing to put up with overly-complex, slow-running sites that are largely incompatible with their mobile devices. The time to eliminate Flash actually came several years ago, yet it still rears its ugly head across millions of websites.
3. Complex Navigation Systems
Again, millennials aren’t willing to waste what little time they have getting to grips with complex and/or clumsy navigation systems. The instant gratification theory extends to all aspects of navigation – your job being to get them where they need to be in an instant, fuss-free.
4. Bland and Boring
Snap judgements about your business as a whole will be made the moment your landing page appears. Meaning that if your site’s general appearance is bland, boring and void of anything inspiring…well, what does this tell the visitor about you? As far as millennials are concerned, stunning imagery, animations, creative fonts and so on all represent expected standards in contemporary web design. Anything to the contrary typically being interpreted as unprofessional, uninspiring or perhaps downright lazy.
5. Autoplay
Being fair, it isn’t just millennial audiences that despise websites which insist on automatically playing irritating audio clips, music of videos. Yes – provide as many video/audio clips as you like, with the option of playing them if the users choose to do so. Just don’t fall into the trap of annoying them half to death within the first five seconds by forcing them to see/hear it!
6. Mobile Imperfections
Last up, with the average millennial touching their smartphone more than 2,600 times per day, you cannot expect to get away with a substandard mobile website. These days, 95% mobile-friendliness just isn’t good enough. If anything, your mobile site should outperform your desktop experience in terms of simplicity, speed and user-friendliness in general. Displease millennials once and you’re unlikely to see them again.
If you run a business in the Manchester region and would like to extend your appeal to a wider audience through strategic web design and marketing, reach out to a member of the Christian Michaels customer service team today.
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