.: Making Your Website Attractive, Interesting, Engaging and Interactive
By:clive harman
Category:Home / Internet / Web Design
In this article you will learn the importance designing your website around your customers and their needs. A websites form and content is what will determine if a visitor will stay just a visitor or turn into your next customer. Today we will discuss how to accomplish the later.
To succeed at your online business (whether you are sellingyour own product/service or are selling for other merchantsas an affiliate), you need a Web site created just for that - a simple, focused site. One that is easy to build, maintenance-free, low cost, credible, and a powerful traffic-builder and customer-converter.
Having the right tool and the right product alone doesn’t insure the success of your website. There are many factors to be considered while designing a site. Unfortunately, most of these are easily ignored by Internet business owners.
Build It for Speed
It's a fact of modern life - people are in a hurry. This means that you have between 10 and 30 seconds to capture your potential customer's attention. Tominimize your load time, keep graphics small. Compress them where possible. Use flashy technology (JavaScript, Flash, Streaming Audio/Video, animation) sparingly and only if it is important to your presentation.
Target your Market
Know who your market is and make certain that your site caters to their needs. It is critical that your site reflect the values of your potential customers. Is your market mostly business professionals? If so, the site must be clean and professional. Is your product aimed mostly a teenagers and young adults? Then your site could be more informal and relaxed. The key here is to know your market and build the site to their preferences.
Focus the Site
Make certain your web site is focused on the goal, selling your product or service. A site offering many unrelated products is not necessarily unfocused, but this is often the case. If your business does offer many products, dedicate a unique page for each instead of trying to sell them all from one page.
Credibility Is Crucial
The most professionally designed site won't sell if your customers don't believe in you. A clear privacy statement is one way to build your credibility. Provide a prominent link to your privacy statement from every page on the site as well as from any location that you are asking your visitors for personal information. Provide legitimate
contact information on line.
Navigation should be simple
Make site navigation easy and intuitive. Simple and smooth navigation adds to the convenience of the visitors. Add powerful search and catalog features. Many times a lot of visitors do not have the patience to navigate through the whole website to find what they are looking for.
Consistency is the key
Make sure the site is consistent in look, feel and design. Nothing is more jarring and disturbing to a customer than feeling as if they have just gone to another site. Keep colors and themes constant throughout the site.
Make your site interactive and personalized
Make your website interactive. Add feedback forms as well as email forms that allow your prospective customers to ask you any questions they might have pertaining to a product.
Personalization of your website is another key element that can lead to customer delight and can increase your sales.
Personalization technology provides you the analytic tools to facilitate cross-selling and up-selling when the customer is buying online. It would give you an idea of what products to cross-sell and up-sell. For example, when a person buys a CD player, a disc cleaner can also be offered.
Content is King
Good content sells a product. Ask yourself the following questions. Does your copy convey the message you wish to get across to your visitors? Is it compelling? Does it lead your visitor through the sales process? Have others review, critique and edit your copy to insure it is delivering the intended message. Always double check your spelling and grammar.
These eight, simple rules will go a long way toward the improvement of your website and most importantly, turn visitors into customers.
Article Source: http://www.articles32.com
Clive Harman site has free ebooks, Free artcles, free web-templates and an a bargain basement. Check it out here http://www.site4information.com
.: New Web Design Articles
1). HTML Might Become Obsolete
Web designers are beginning to dump HTML in favor of more versatile web programming languages
2). Macromedia Dreamweaver: An Introduction
Getting started with your first web page can seem very daunting indeed. Macromedia Dreamweaver is the industry leader in web editors, but knowing where to start and what you need to know can be a little confusing at first.
3). Finding A Good Web Designer
Avoid the mistakes I made when I hired someone over the internet to design my web site
4). Top Tips for Getting Free Websites
There are millions of opportunities of earning money online, but for that you frequently need to have a web site and there are many people interested in how to build a web site online for free. So whether you want to build a free business web site or to build a Yahoo-like web site, you can be sure there are plenty of online guides, such as this, to take you step by step through the process.
5). Is Your Web Site Driving Away Visitors?
Much has been written about optimizing your web site for search engines, but less emphasis is placed on usability. Optimizing for usability and for search engines is not a contradiction.
6). Choosing a Web Designer
freelance web designers are rip-off artists
7). HTML Sitemaps Are Still Important
An html sitemap is one that humans and search engines both can read. Google sitemaps are important too, but they are specific to google and are read only by a search engine.
.: Top Web Design Articles
1). Advanced Joomla Templating (pt1) Using Module Class Suffix
an article from User Written Resources
1. duplicate the styles already used for the particular module, adding a suffix to each style name. this will definitely include some of the following;
1. .module {} 2. div.moduletable {} 3. div.moduletable h3 {} 4. table.moduletable {}/li> 5. table.moduletable th 6. table.moduletable td
and can include other styles used on the content in that section, such as;
1.
2). How To Make a MySpace Layout That Stand Out
If you are a MySpace user, you have learned what an easy to read and fun profile looks like. The only problem is, you may not know how to create or find out. Most of the time when you see an awful MySpace layout, it's because its sloppy, hard to read, or has annoying links you didn’t even see. That is because since MySpace has been growing so much, so have the layout sites.
3). Professional XOOPS theme design - What to look for
In general, prices for theme design work will range depending on a number of factors. If you don't mind the designer releasing the theme on their site for others to purchase, then you can expect anywhere from $20US to $50US for your theme. If the theme must be a one of a kind theme that only you use, you could expect to multipy the fee by at least 10x.
4). Adsense: The Smart Investment
Over the last 2 years, We have been building a Virtual Adsense Empire of over 500 websites and making some good money. We've also been building content sites for clients using the same system. The system we use is not something that produces 1000's of sites with a click of a button, our system does not build spam websites, nor does it produce the same sites you see over and over and over again.
5). Irish Graphic Design Industry
Graphic design is the use of color, light, balance, contrast, emphasis, proportion, proximity, repetition, texture and a plethora of other elements to create a work of digital art that is pleasing to the eye. Graphic design is about seamlessly molding image and text to convey a theme, message, or often advertise a product or service. Graphic design dates back to prehistoric times.
6). How to Create a Splash Page for Your Website?
These splash designs prove to be quite popular, especially among the designers as they allow the designer to show their skills in flash and any other technology on a single page. The splash page design involved in the splash page will be one that is very attractive to the eye of the viewer. Its main intention lies in captivating the viewer the moment he looks at it.
7). Does Your Web Design Include Background Music?
When you design your website, you may wonder whether or not you should include background music in your web design. The answer to this requires you to ask two additional questions: