Web Design Performance - February 2009


Web design Sunshine Coast

At 12website.com.au - web design sunshine coast, we have seen some underperforming sites. What about you? How could they make any money? A badly designed website can ruin credibility and can turn visitors away before your web site has had a good chance to present your business. Our newsletter from September 04: Websites - good, bad and ugly.

There are several points retail store managers have to do to make it in today's world in order to ensure a solid performance. Many of these tactics are directly applicable to websites.

Clean design

The shop has to be clean to perform well. The floor, the walls, the actual furniture itself, and, the counter! Clean uncluttered with a bright body ready to help you.

Sensible design

The store has to logical. The arrangement of the inventory, the signage, the bedspreads on the beds and the logic of store branding logos, posters, and policy signs have to look professional as well. Overall, your website's look has to be clean, neat, and "feel good".

Colour

What about colours? The ladies in this business know things about colour and what goes with what. What I know is it has to be easy to read.

In furniture stores the colours need to be those that are popular in furniture today, not last year. A websites redesign may mean new colours. We have devoted a section of last month's newsletter - Web design for customers to the meaning of colour.

Web design for sales

The salespeople have to speak clearly and without obvious defects in their speech habits to deliver that overall winning performance. It's the same with websites. In retail stores the salespeople need to be clean and spiffy and give their full attention to the customer in order not to appear disinterested.

You can see where this would apply in websites to profiles of people, in testimonials, in scrupulous attention to detail and spelling.

The devil is in the detail. Spelling! It is said that a potential customer's enthusiasm will notch down a bit for every misspelling and grammatical error. It pays to proofread! For this newsletter, I copy the content into a document and use spell & grammar check.

Experts suggest that you should have another person do your proofreading for you, since you are not as likely to catch all of your own mistakes. Similarly you should have another person look at your website from a customer point of view. We spend so much time in our business we sometimes take for granted what the customer understands. A lot of this is covered in web design home page from March 2008.

Web design for sales

The sales area has to be kept neat and businesslike, but not barren and empty. Like the rest of the web design, it has to be neat and clean. It should be easy to purchase!

Your website should be perceived by your visitors as a good place to do business; what we would call web design performance. It should be welcoming, professional and help them around in order to make the sale as easy as possible.

Your website says a lot about your business, so you need to make certain it is saying positive things.

If you want to make sure your website isn't falling short on the details of general housekeeping, find a few sites that are trying to do something similar to what you are attempting, and use them for comparison sake. That's a good place to start. More on professional web design from December 2004.

Keep the web simple

My sales pages start at the top and go to the bottom. It is hard to confuse your customer with top to bottom?

Keep it simple, no clutter, easy to read and don't allow spelling and grammar errors. Your customers will like that and be more inclined to buy.


Ask for the sale

You'd be amazed how many websites don't do this. You know what you want them to do, and, if your copy is any good, it contains many benefits for your visitor. Customers want those benefits (like more sales, higher conversion rates, and fewer returns) and they are willing to pay to get them.

Be very direct, but smooth. Say to the customer... "Click this button and when you get to PayPal check that the quantity is correct and that the price is right. If it is, continue with your purchase and start profiting from an improved website right away! This is web design performance.

Thank you for your business!

Notes on website navigation

Many people spend hours surfing the web, reading articles, and watching videos. Each site gets about 8 seconds to lure them in or watch them leave. Knowing how many users are enjoying your content, and how many are bouncing away is the first step in creating a useful website. Making sure you follow acceptable usability guidelines is the next step. More on web design useability.

Good navigation is a must for any website. Going from one page to another should be intuitive and easy. Make sure each page has a navigation bar that points to major parts of your site.

The more options people have the better you chances of someone finding something they like. Be careful not to overload the navigation bar though, which might just turn people away. Use our web design checklist to 'get it right the first time'.

Contact us to find out more - Sunshine Coast 0407 589 420.

Disclaimer

12website.com has prepared the supplied information as a voluntary service to the online community. The information is necessarily web design and small business in nature and is not intended to be relied upon other than as general background material. This should not be used as specific advice, recommendations or guidance, and specialist assistance should be sought by anyone in need of such help. 12website.com accepts no liability under any circumstances for any loss, expense, damages or costs whether direct or indirect (including loss of profits / damage to business) which may be incurred by any person as a result of relying on or using in whole or in part any of the supplied information.

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