Web site Designing Articles

Website Design Tips

Date: 27Sep2007

The time visitors will spend on your site and if they stay an shop there is highly influenced by the design of your site. Does this sound a bit unbelievable? Just think about it. What does capture your attention when you're just surfing around on the web, not really interested in anything. Or when you exactly know what are you looking for but you have to choose from a million sites in the same field. Yes, the key word is: design. So, if you're interested in internet marketing, these simple things you definitely should keep in mind about web design.

Easy Navigation - An Absolute Necessity for Success

People don't like to waste their time searching for things that should be easy to find. So a site that makes it difficult to do business with them mostly scares visitors away then attract them. People have got used to look in the left hand side of pages for navigation bar. So if visitors come to your site to find beauty products, then you should have a button easy to see and locate that says "Beauty Products".

Flashing Graphics - Don't do it!

Surely you know the sites where different kinds of little or bigger things appear on your screen asking you to click on them, like dancing mouses or poker chips. Well, if you run a professional site don't even think to put something like this on your site. They might be cute, but they are really unprofessional and only give a headache to your visitors. Make your online shopping site a pleasant environment for the customer to be in, just like a store. Keep it clean, well laid out, with good customer service and the products what they are looking for. Another question is music. On most business sites it's not a good idea. But in some cases it can enhance the impression. But, in this cases also, it is advisable to have it "off" when people log onto your site and give them an option to turn it on. Otherwise if the music is loud or they cannot find fast the way to turn it off visitors will leave your site very quickly.

What About Colors?

Color is an individual preference, but studies also show that they have an affect on people's emotions. Just look at the sites that are considered the best, like Amazon; the layout is simple and so is the color scheme. The colors you should choose also depend on the topic of your site. For instance conservative colors go for a financial investment site, soft pastels for a beauty related site, lots of fun colors for a site selling beach items. Just think about your audience and you'll know the color scheme.

Page Links

That's no big deal but you have to do it for an easier navigation. Just check out if all your buttons are hyperlinked to the right destination page.

About Us

People like to know basic things when buying anything online. About your company, privacy policies, guarantees, how and when can they get the products and so on. You have to answer these questions to create trust between you and your potential customers.

Sitemap

A Guide to Find the Way A good sitemap helps people to find what they are looking for, especially when you have a lots of products or resources, without getting a headache searching through all your pages. Sitemaps are not hard to create and are really useful mostly for large sites. They also help search engines to know you are about very quickly. - Fast Loading Pages You can verify your page load time and page rank on Alexa.com and if you have to, you can optimize the graphics for your site. People hate to wait, so there's nothing worse for an online business like slow loading pages.

Shopping Cart

If you want to sell something, you need to have a well organized and reliable shopping cart. Don't use ordering via email! People just won't use it. Athough the shopping cart will charge you a fee, but it is worth it for them to handle the transaction. There are many good shopping carts available you can find the best for you based on your business' needs.

Templates or Original Design?

If the question were: 'A Chevrolet or a Porsche?'

the answer would be easier I guess. It's not that a website that uses templates will turn off customers, but it may not be as appealing. A good site design not always costs a fortune and you yourself can also look for various pictures on the internet to make you site more customized.

Customer Service - The Finish Line!

Maybe you're wondering know how customer service is connected to website design. Well, customer service should be written all over your site. Tips, free reports, guarantees are all part of it. People will trust you more if you have an image like you know what you're talking about and can deliver the products they want. Give a little and you'll get in back tenfold, for sure.