Some links on this post may link to affiliate pages that offer compensation to the author of this post.
“Ugh. What in the world is this website? I don’t even know where to click? This feels like a scam… I’m not sure I can trust this website.” Look they may not be saying it out loud, but gen Z is tired of you making these marketing mistakes. And if you’re ignoring gen Z because they don’t have money right now… Then that’s fair. Leave and never return. They’re only like 24 right now anyway, who cares if they aren’t in your target audience.
But if you recognize the value of a customer who expects to find your business online, is comfortable making purchases through a store millions of miles away, and loves to obsess over their favorite local brands… There may be hope for you yet…
So check out these top marketing mistakes that GenZ refuses to tolerate if you want your business to succeed in the increasingly global market economy.
“What Even Are Those Colors? They hurt my eyes!”
I’m sorry, but yellow on a website? ARE YOU MCDONALDS? Take some pride in your brand and take the color science behind your branding seriously. Yes I recognize yellow is a primary color in my website at the moment. That’s why I’m redoing it.
The colors you use on your website can make or break everything! Do your business a favor really quickly and do a 3 second exercise if you own your own website.
Brand color exercise:
Open your website right now and look at your colors. Then tell me how they make you feel.
Is it cluttered? Do you feel confused? Or do you feel calm, meaningful and inspired by the colors on your website .
If you can’t answer that question honestly, genZ can. They will take one look at your website with 3 different non-contrasted colors and immediately vomit in disgust and throw their phone at their parents.
Seriously.
The colors you use matter almost more than anything else on your site. They are the foundation for which your customers learn and feel out your value. You could be telling your customers your too expensive, too cheap, too young, too old, and it all starts with good color science.
“All Websites that don’t Accommodate Accessibility Issues Will be Canceled and Sued in 2023”
Did you know the real reason Facebook rebranded to Meta was to avoid an Accessibility Discrimination Lawsuit? It’s not true, but I said it.
Its a good thing Mark Zuckerberg has literally billions of dollars to throw away on accessibility lawsuits because they are being levied against businesses left and right.
Oh you don’t have an Accessibility option for differently abled people on your website? Expect a “canceled” letter in the mail.
Look, in all seriousness, your site should be safe, secure and accessible for everyone. Deaf, blind and all different walks of life should feel just as at home on your website as they do on Nike’s.
You owe it to not only yourself to avoid lawsuits, but you owe it to the people who have taken the time to click your website link out of the 50 other links they click on kn a day. Don’t let that person slip away because you wouldn’t cough up the change for a $50 plugin.
“What a Boomer Website!?!”
No disrespect to any of our wonderful baby boomer blog readers, but anything that was made before 2005 is considered ancient history in terms of web design.
If you’re still rocking that old outdated WordPress theme from 2014 that you’ve never updated and the license expired in 2016… You need a refresh. And not just a new hero image you need something that will bring you into the actual 21st century of web design.
Great websites are minimal, take a lot of consideration to spacing, and tastefully integrate color in a whole new way.
With the way the internet changes overnight, your brand new website from even as recent as 2019 can feel like an old and outdated design in 2023 if you neglect it.
All you need to do is carefully revisit your site once a month and determine if it’s really doing what you need it to do. If it’s not, take an extra 2 or so minutes and think about what you really need to make it better.
Or if you want, I can do it for you. Work with me.
All GenZ (and every other demographic) has Web ADHD
Designing a beautiful website is hard… But what’s even harder is getting people with an attention span that averages about 4 seconds to give you their email address and phone number.
With only a few seconds of crucial time to capture attention, we like to use a technique we call “applied creativity.” Which we loosely define as creativity for the sake of conversion.
With such short of an attention span your website’s design needs to be able to capture attention in 2 seconds, explain everything you do in four, and give customers an easy way to contact you in 11 seconds.
Yes, this is a bit of an exaggeration for some industries. Desktop visitors tend to have a longer attention span, but mobile visitors are cut throat! Especially when designing your mobile website be very thoughtful about how long it takes to deliver your message.
“Mmmmm, nah fam. Spam ain’t it.”
Gen Z more than any other generation before them hates spam. So if your business sends millennials or gen Z any unsolicited emails or text messages, you have already signed your own marketing death certificates
Especially if you’re a company who has opted into SMS or text based marketing, you need to be very careful and thoughtful about how you message to gen Z.
SMS marketing can be the most effective for many small businesses but it can also be the most dangerous with spammy SMS messages getting your phone number blocked or even reported as a Spam number can result in you never being able to Market through SMS ever again to anyone.
These are the top 5 mistakes that GenZ visitors will not tolerate on your website. What are the biggest problems you have seen on a website?
Thanks for reading to the end of this post. If you find the information I provide to be helpful, please consider subscribing.
Disclaimer: None of the information presented on this site constitutes legal, business, tax, or medical advice. In each scenario, it’s recommended to first chat with a medical, legal, business, or tax professional before making any decisions.
