While website design is, to some extent, a matter of creativity, there are certain principles which apply that make your site user-friendly. With the billions of websites available for people to peruse, you want to make sure yours is easily found online, and almost as important, that it appeals to your target audience enough that they do what you want them to do. Your goal may be to get the potential customer to buy something, to click on an ad or to donate money, for instance, and your site should act like a gentle funnel that leads them to where you want them; this should, coincidentally, be what they want also.
To expand on the first example above, if you want the website visitor to buy something, then your site needs to be designed and the content written in such as way as to attract specific, targeted people who are already looking to by what you are selling. Your website should simply be the tipping point where they find the information they need to purchase the product, and trust you enough to do so. This means that you have full contact information, perhaps some appropriate FAQ's, some customer testimonials, a worthy guarantee, excellent pricing, etc.. All of these things help a customer want to buy a product from you.
Contact information and answers to questions are two things that many people look for as absolute basics in a website, especially one which sells products, which is asking for trust from a stranger. Some other things to consider include:
Avoid: Music which plays automatically when the visitor comes onto the site, for one thing. Allow them the choice to click 'Play' if they want musical accompaniment. Studies have shown that this is one of the quickest ways to get people to press the back button and leave your site forever. The same goes for too many pop-ups, especially talking pop-ups and other gimmicks. Also avoid a very busy, flashy look with lots of moving parts and items competing for a reader's attention. A person should be able to navigate intuitively to the information they are looking for, and not get distracted, which means they either get annoyed or they get involved looking at something other than what you want them to be buying, clicking, etc..
Include: As mentioned, always put contact information in an easy to find place, and be sure you monitor the email address, phone number, etc. so that you can answer questions in a timely manner. A sure way to lose potential business is to not answer a customer inquiry, or to delay too long in answering it, so that they've become impatient or even moved on. FAQ (frequently asked questions) with comprehensive answers posted are a great way to help offset customer inquiries by providing them with the information they need right on their screen. This saves both you and the potential customer time.
In general, good website design is clean, has a theme and content which clearly reflect the topic at hand and has easy to find pages and tabs for readers to click on. Follow these simple tips and get started attracting the perfect customers for you!
To expand on the first example above, if you want the website visitor to buy something, then your site needs to be designed and the content written in such as way as to attract specific, targeted people who are already looking to by what you are selling. Your website should simply be the tipping point where they find the information they need to purchase the product, and trust you enough to do so. This means that you have full contact information, perhaps some appropriate FAQ's, some customer testimonials, a worthy guarantee, excellent pricing, etc.. All of these things help a customer want to buy a product from you.
Contact information and answers to questions are two things that many people look for as absolute basics in a website, especially one which sells products, which is asking for trust from a stranger. Some other things to consider include:
Avoid: Music which plays automatically when the visitor comes onto the site, for one thing. Allow them the choice to click 'Play' if they want musical accompaniment. Studies have shown that this is one of the quickest ways to get people to press the back button and leave your site forever. The same goes for too many pop-ups, especially talking pop-ups and other gimmicks. Also avoid a very busy, flashy look with lots of moving parts and items competing for a reader's attention. A person should be able to navigate intuitively to the information they are looking for, and not get distracted, which means they either get annoyed or they get involved looking at something other than what you want them to be buying, clicking, etc..
Include: As mentioned, always put contact information in an easy to find place, and be sure you monitor the email address, phone number, etc. so that you can answer questions in a timely manner. A sure way to lose potential business is to not answer a customer inquiry, or to delay too long in answering it, so that they've become impatient or even moved on. FAQ (frequently asked questions) with comprehensive answers posted are a great way to help offset customer inquiries by providing them with the information they need right on their screen. This saves both you and the potential customer time.
In general, good website design is clean, has a theme and content which clearly reflect the topic at hand and has easy to find pages and tabs for readers to click on. Follow these simple tips and get started attracting the perfect customers for you!