Questions to Ask Before Designing Your Website
Now that you are ready to take your business to the next level of exposure, promotion and accessibility, you will want to resolve a few critical questions as you begin the design of your website.
What do I want to accomplish with my site? If your site is primarily being established to sell your products, you will want to design your site to include:
- colourful displays of your products
- detailed and enticing product descriptions
- a search feature to locate the desired item quickly
- contact information so visitors can send an email to customer service or make inquiries
- a shopping basket, cart or bag
- a wish list for customers who aren't quite ready to visit the sales desk
- methods of payments that allow for both credit cards and Paypal
- customer loyalty incentives.
Sites that are designed to sell merchandise must be visually pleasing, easy to navigate, and informative. If your buyers cannot obtain the information they need quickly they will shop somewhere else. Once you gain customers you will want them to return so offer incentives like reward points or frequent buyer discounts.
If your site is being established to provide information make use of navigational buttons so that you don't subject your visitors to information overload on the first page. Categorize information to allow your customers greater ease in finding the specific items they want without doing a lot of extra reading. A well designed navigation bar will support rapid movement on the site.
How do I want to Convey the Information or Products? Naturally you will want to convey your information or products in an appealing and non cluttered format optimizing white space and contrasts. Beyond this however, you may also want to divide your page into thirds and place significant bits of information in strategic places so that visitors will move their eyes up and down in an N pattern as they read through your site. This is an advertising technique that will engender positive feelings about your product. If you have a lot of textual information to convey, consider placing the same information in a podcast. Your visitors will appreciate not having to scroll down through a page that is longer than Santa's shopping list and has enough text to fill a Dostoevsky novel.
If an audio or audio-visual cast is not a possibility, divide your information into categories and include a number of hotlinks or navigational buttons to compartmentalize your text which improves accessibility and creates a sense of movement through your site. A good rule of thumb is 2/3 text and a third graphic information. If you are selling items you may want to equalize the ratio to allow for an effective visual display of your merchandise
How Do I Design a Website that Looks Professional?
To gain a significant edge over the competition, consider purchasing a website template. These web templates are well designed and inexpensive. Include stock photos on your website. There are companies that specialize in supplying images for websites and other uses. You will be amazed at how well a stock photo can be adapted to your needs.
If you don't wish to invest in the purchase of such items, design your own site and look for free clip art. First visit a number of sites and make note of everything you like and dislike. Then highlight the features that will be suitable for your purposes. Implement those features on your site. If you don't know how there are a number of websites that can help you. Just type: How to Create a Website into your favorite browser and a number of helpful sites will appear.
Structure the information on your site so that it draws people in beyond your home page this will help you reduce the number of hit and run visitors. Consider presenting three or more pages to your visitors if you are selling a product or offering a service. Begin with the home page followed by a subcategory of selections. Follow this with the product page and finally the purchase transaction page will close the sale. Remember that the more time people spend on your site the more likely they will be to buy from you. So the trick is to get them moving through your website like the neighborhood Nosey Parker.