Nothing can compromise your online business more than a poorly designed or amateurish website. Design has become increasingly sophisticated and shoppers expect your site to have clear navigation, be well written, load fast and work correctly around the clock.
Whether you design the site yourself or hire an individual or firm to do it, there are some features all great websites have in common.
Fast loading – The speed at which a web page loads depends upon many factors, including the speed of the customer’s web connection. Appoximately 20% to 30% of the population has high speed Internet access. The rest are using dialup, which is significantly slower. Don’t use extraneous coding or a lot of fancy features that don’t help increase sales. If a page doesn’t load in five seconds or less, chances are very good that the visitor will simply click right out of it. Everything you place on a page – Flash animation, graphics, photos and coding – consumes additional bandwidth, increasing the time it takes to assemble and load the page. Think thin. Think small.
Stay focused – Any business knows it can’t be all things to all people. Know what your business is about and know what you’re selling. Then sell it in clear, concise terms. Don’t confuse the visitor with lots of links to content that doesn’t relate to your business. You have only a few seconds to capture the visitor’s attention and hold them there. Everything, from the text and headlines to the images should support your core business. Nothing else matters. A common beginner’s mistake is to throw everything into a site but the kitchen sink. Don’t be tempted to make this basic error.
Build trust – Your reputation is everything on the Internet. Your visitor may have never even heard of you before. As a result, you need to build trust if you’re going to get their business. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Don’t make claims you can’t back up. Use testimonials whenever possible. Finally, err on the side of giving visitors too much information. Include sections on shipping, privacy, security, returns and frequently asked questions. If possible, offer a money-back guarantee as well if the customer is not satisfied. Remove every roadblock possible to a sale.
Keep navigation simple – Visit some of the most successful sites on the Internet and learn from the masters. Limit the number of times your visitor has to click to get to where they want to go. Categorize content along logical lines. If you have products to sell, include them all in one section. Don’t hide them. After all, your primary goal of having a site is to get business.
Be consistent in design – Nothing is more of a put off than a site that looks like the circus just came to town. Just because you have 300 fonts doesn’t mean that you should use them all. The same is true with colors. Choose one or two fonts for headlines and a single font for text. A safe choice for text is always Arial or Times New Roman because every computer has these fonts installed. If you choose an unusual font, chances are good it won’t display on the visitors computer because they need to have it already installed on their computer for it to appear. Keep it simple. As for colors, choose a few complementary colors and stick with them in your design. Let photos or illustrations add color to your pages. Finally, be sure to use the same design throughout the site. Create a single look and stick with it on every page.
