Website Design

Your business is different. You worked hard to come up with your unique selling proposition. Now someone is suggesting that you put your business back into the pool with everyone else by using the same website design template as thousands of other businesses on the web. Does that much make sense to you?

You don’t have to take a huge amount of time to invent something complicated. Simple websites are often the most effective. Make sure your navigation is easy to follow and the return to Home highly visible.

If you are not technical consider the addition of web editor software to enable you to easily make changes and additions to your website.

 

Ten Tips to Successful Website Design

 

1. Put your website navigation bar at the top or on the left. That’s where people expect it to be and where they will instinctively look for it.
2. Spend some time researching good keywords for your website. Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool or WordTracker.com are helpful keyword tools. Use your keywords throughout the body text, in the title, the web name, the Meta tags (keywords, title page, and description), the header, and anywhere else it makes sense to do so.
3. Know what kind of website will you have; information or sales. What do you expect of your website?
4. Make a list of all the pages you want to include in your website, just as you would do an outline if you were writing a book (e.g., Home, About Us, Products/Services, Contact Us, Links, News, Resources, FAQ, Site Map, Online Store, Testimonials, Privacy Policy, Media Contact, etc.).
5. Offer value. One of the greatest uses of the internet is research. Use this to your advantage by providing information and products for the people who come to your website. It’s an opportunity for you to do some research as well. Create surveys and ask for the opinions of your visitors and customers.
6. Have a statistics package so you know who is coming to your website and what they are coming for. Then, you can give your visitors more of what they want.
7. Remind people to bookmark your website and tell them they can print out any of your articles for future reference.
8. Spell and grammar check your website. Ask someone else to edit your website script for you.
9. Focus on your customers. Your website is not about you, it’s about offering something to your customers.
10. Make instructions easy to follow and link between pages of your website. Offer information or the opportunity to purchase other items that are related to your main product.

Ten Website Problems to Avoid

1. Hosting companies who want to own your domain name.
2. Web development companies who insist that Flash is the only way to go. The term “all flash and no substance” really applies in this case. Flash takes longer to load and many dial-up internet users will be on to the next website if yours takes too long to load. Google can now index Flash files but it's still not something you want to use to develop your entire website.
3. Companies who will have control of your database and are on a platform that is incompatible with others.
4. Any company that tries to lock you into working with them and doesn't give you the option to move on if you are unhappy with their services.
5. Pages that are too long. Long copy sells best but too much scrolling is not user friendly.
6. Contact information that is difficult to find. If your website is an advertisement, it makes sense to make it easy for people to contact you.
7. Old content. Keep your website up to date or it quickly loses value and appeal.
8. Pages that take too long to load.
9. Talking about yourself and not your customers. After all, if you want them to hire you it’s all about what they want.
10. Too many different font or design styles. Keep your website simple and clean.

Benefits of a Good Website

1. Generate revenue
2. Provide information
3. Collect data
4. Provide feedback and complaints
5. Communicate clearly
6. Mirror your other marketing materials