EFFECTIVE WEB SITE DESIGN STRATEGIES

If you want to be successful online, you need to develop a web site that serves the needs of your visitors in a manner that is both user-friendly and easily understood.

This sounds easy enough!

Well, unfortunately, no one thing is going to make your web site a success. You need to constantly be trying and testing new things, even if you currently have a web site that is doing well. Why? Because what works today, isn't necessarily going to work tomorrow!

Here are some of the rules that you should follow when developing and maintaining your web site:

1. It Must Be Fast Loading

If your home page does not load quickly, your visitors will lose patience and click away. Web surfers are extremely impatient..if they can't begin reading or viewing your home page in less than 10 seconds, they will simply leave.

Remember that not everyone is using a 56.6K modem, cable, DSL, or higher. there are still a LOT of people using 28.8K and 33.6K modems..so don't overload your web site with large graphics.

If you do need to use large graphics on your home page, provide a small icon that links to the larger graphic and warn people that there may be a wait as it loads.

Here are some of the tricks that you can use to speed up the transfer of your web pages:

• Reduce the file size of graphics. WebGraphics Optimiser is a great tool for optimising and compressing images for online and internet use.

• Specify the dimensions of graphics files in the HTML code. By doing so, the web browser will "draw out" the size of the page needed and where the images will go, display the text, and leave room for the graphics files to load in place.

• Reduce the number of graphics you are using for "esthetic" purposes

• Decrease the number of files that your web page consists of - both HTML and graphics files. This is a really easy trick that is often overlooked. Most people have a default maximum of of four socket connections in their web browsers. Each "socket" allows one file to be transferred to your computer. This means that if you have four sockets, you can download four files simultaneously.
  
  If you have six images on your home page and one HTML file, then there are seven files that need to be downloaded. A browser with four sockets downloading this page would therefore download the first four files, and wait until a socket came available again to begin downloading each of the remaining files.

  In other words, your fifth file (or graphic) that loads into a visitor's web browser (with the default set to four sockets) will not start loading until the fifth file has finished loading. As you can see, this can be a lengthy process if there are a lot of files to be loaded...particularly when the files are large.

  As a rule-assuming that your graphics are of moderate size (i.e. 5 to 12K)-keep less than five files on a page if you can. Of course, this may not always be possible.

• Most graphic files do not need to be the size they are on common web pages. You only need 72 dpi for screen resolution, and graphics only need to be 256 colors (or less). A small 4"x2"graphic should be no bigger than 10K

• Substitute coloured text for a graphics file when possible. In other words, instead of using a graphic to draw attention to something, use coloured text.

• Quick tip:For web pages larger than 50K, you should consider putting a small note at the top of your page which urges visitors to be patient while the graphics load. This will prevent customers with slow connection (hence slow download time) leaving.

2. Collect E-mail Addresses

Do this as quickly as possible, form your home or index page. Give your visitors a reason to give you their e-mail address. Offer them a free report, a free newsletter, a free ebook, or free information updates. Get their address and their permission to contact them.

For example, at the bottom of your page you could have a text that reads, "To receive your own copy of this article, please click here and enter your e-mail address." The words "click here" would be a command that triggers your autoresponder to send the article to the e-mail address entered. The e-mail addresses are captured in the autoresponder logs, allowing you to e-mail these targeted potential customers again in the future with articles or offers.

3. Limit Your Visitors' Choices.

Don't give visitors hundreds of choices on your main page. Lead them through your site. If you are selling a product or service, lead visitors towards the "decision to buy". Don't leave it to chance that, out of thirty choices on your main page, they might decide to look at and buy your product. Take control and lead them to your offer!

4. Never include links to related sites on your main page!

It's like shooting yourself in the foot! After working hard to get the visitor to your site, why would you send them away to check out someone else's product? It just doesn't make sense.

5. It Must Be Simple To Navigate.

Don't make your visitors wade through dozens of of irrevelant pages before you give them the information they need. Make it easy for your visitors to move through your site...they'll stick around much longer, and will be more likely to visit you again!

Provide text links or icons on each sub-page so that people can easily click back and forth through your site without having to use the "Back" and "Forward" buttons on their browsers. Include well-labelled navigation buttons along the top, bottom, or side of each page that allows visitors to easily move back to your home page, to your order forms, or to other product information.

By making your site easy to navigate, you'll not only ensure that visitors feel comfortable moving through your site, you'll also make it easy for visitors to arrive at your web site somewhere other than your home page and find their way around.

Warning You should avoid using image maps on your home page. Many people use this large graphic that can be clicked in different areas to send visitors to different parts of their web sites. The problem is, these big image maps take eons to load and your customers cannot do anything but sit and wait. It is much better to use small graphics or icons as links to each of your sub-pages.

6. Be consistent.

Be sure that the look and design of your web site is consistent. Choose a background colour and stick to it. Choose link and text colours, and use them consistently. Always put your navigation buttons in the same place, be it along the side, or across the bottom of the page.

Consistency of design will ensure that the experience at your site is a pleasant one. It will also let visitors know that they are still at your site and that they haven't linked off somewhere else!

7. Be wise when using coloured text.

Use coloured text to indicate links (blue is traditional) and to emphasise important concepts or points. Too many different colours make your text hard to read...and it looks unprofessional. You are designing a web page, not a circus poster!

8. Be Careful When Choosing Coloured Backgrounds

Choose your colours carefully. Don't put inappropriate colours together. Use a plain colour background (i.e. no fancy textures or designs). Make sure your text contrasts STRONGLY with your background colour...black text on a white background is the best combination.

Remember that different browsers read colours differently...some people purposefully set their browsers to read only 16 of 256 colour combinations. So be warned! while a white background with black text may seem pretty boring, everyone will be able to read your copy!

9. Think Creatively When Developing Your Links.

Your links can be boring, or they can invite people to click on them. They can either detract from your site, or contribute to it. Think creatively when developing your links, but be sure that they make sense! For example, which link do you think people would be more likely to click on: "Other stuff" or "Valuable Tips and Resources"?

10. Provide text alternatives for all graphics and links.

This is important because some of your visitors will have their graphics option turned off in their browser. As well, this ensures that the text is available for instances where the stop button is pressed before the browser has had chance to finish loading the page.

11. Use Descriptive And Meaningful File Names.

Your file names not only show up in Search Engines, but also at the top of your visitors' browsers and in their bookmarks!

12. Java, Animation And Wild Graphics.

It is NOT that you shouldn't use them!. If you are a multimedia game designer demonstrating your skills, then it may be appropriate. However, you should not feel that you have to design the most advanced site on the Net to get noticed or make sales (many dead Dot Coms have made this mistake)!

Quality information and a strategic sales process that establishes credibility, develops rapport, and emphasises value is going to be what closes the sale, not flashy graphics. The technology you choose should largely depend on the kind of site you have and who your target audience is.

13. Let Visitors Know Who You Are.

Make it easy for visitors to contact you...don't make them hunt through your site for your e-mail address or phone number. Real phone numbers, real names and real addresses make a HUGE difference! It will reassure them you're a real and credible business.

Include your contact information (company name, address, link to contact page, and tel./fax. numbers) at the bottom of each page of your site

14. Guide Visitors Through Your Web Site.

Do you let your visitors wander aimlessly through your site, or do you gently lead them where you want them to go? If you are selling a product or service, you should definitely be leading them through your offer to a purchase.

Have you made the benefits of your product or service clear to them? Have you established credibility and developed rapport with them? Have you created excitement? have you asked for the order? Have you given the visitor several clear ways to order your product or service? both on and offline? Have you guided your visitor through all of this step by step?

Even if your site is information based, you should still have a strategy. For example, at the end of an article you could suggest another article that the visitor might be interested in viewing. Remember, your goal is to keep people at your site.

15. You Must Offer A Secure Order Page!

This does not mean that your entire site needs to be "secure"..just the page that people place their final order on. If your web host does not offer secure order pages, You don't need to move your entire site..simply have your ordering page hosted by someone who does offer a secure server.

16. Consider Adding A Shopping Cart.

If you sell more than a handful of items, shopping cart software will help increase your sales.However, visitors should be able to add and subtract items effortlessly, and they should understand what is happening each step of the way. If they don't they will become frustrated and leave.

17. Accommodate The Customers Who Wish To Order Offline.

You need to to able to process orders by phone, fax, and mail. You must also be prepared to handle cheques and money orders.

18. Be Ready With Fresh Content

Your web site content must be up-to-date and relevant to your audience. If your site is information based, then you need to be sure that you are adding new content on a regular basis. Why would your visitors come back if there is nothing new for them? plus, you lose credibility when your information is old and out of date.

19. Critically Examine The Content Of Each Page

Don't make your pages any longer than they need be. Pages that scrool down forever can be tiresome and unless they're well written, feeping your visitors' interest is difficult. Be sure that you NEED everything on the page. It's worth critically examining the contents of a page, sentence by sentence, and ask yourself 'which stuff' is necessary and what is just padding, that can be done without.

20. Don't Be Afraid Of Empty Space!

Don't clutter up your page with loads of 'stuff'. If it's not essential, leave it out. You can draw attention to the important things by giving them space to breathe rather than making them big or loud.

21. Don't Put A Graphic Counter On Your Site!

People will not buy from a site that has something like "Visitors since 1988: 00001471 in a glaring graphic at the bottom of the page. Just don't do it! You'll have all the statistics you need about your visitors from your server logs.

22. Avoid Clutter Of Your Home Page.

Don't clutter your home page with banners. ads, and unnecessary graphics. Less is definitely more in web site design. If you want to place ads on your site keep it to a minimum - especially on your home page (maximum of two banners - preferably none). These take up valuable download time and distract your visitors from your central product/s.

23. Avoid Over using Gadgets.

If it does not enhance your sales message or unique selling proposition (USP), leave it out! There are very few gadgets that impress nowadays! If you want to impress your visitors give them clear information on clearly laid-out pages that download quickly.

24. Avoid Background Music!

Don't even consider putting background music on your site. Nothing sends visitors running away faster than a woeful, repetitive midi file 'tinkling' away in the background.

25. Don't Put Up 'Under Construction Sign'!

If your web page is not finished don't make it accessible.

26. Text Formatting

USE CAPITAL LETTERS sparingly to highlight important words. DON'T TYPE LARGE BLOCKS OF TEXT ALL IN CAPITALS. It makes your text hard to read and it looks awful. Your visitors will not want to read it. If you want to highlight something important, try using space or colour instead.

Don't put large blocks of text in BOLD! You should use bold text sparingly, for emphasis or for headings.

Don't underline any text on your page! People will think it's a link, that's not working.

27. Test! Test! Test!

Be sure that you take the time to test each of your web pages in the different web browsers (i.e. Netscape, Internet Explorer, AOL, etc...) as well as in all resolutions (i.e. 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768). Even take the time to test your new page on new and older versions of the major browsers.

Check out all the links, the navigation bars, the load time, etc...and be sure that you do this before you submit your site to the search engines.

28. Total Automation is key!

The Net is a global medium that is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Therefore, to run a successful e-business, you must be prepared to meet the needs of all your customers...at any hour! Automating your business is the only way you can accomplish this. Total automation is essential! If you are not going to fully automate your business you must be prepared to:

• Check your e-mail every day of the week, including weekends and holidays.
• Confirm and process every order within 24 hours.
• Waste valuable time to fill orders and do paperwork when you could be promoting your business and increasing sales.

Automating your business will initially take some extra effort, but it is time well spent! this is not something you want to try to do once your business is off the ground. You'll be too busy trying to keep up to think about restructuring your business. This is a key reason why many businesses don't succeed on the Net...they get consumed by daily chores and have no time to focus on growing their business!

Repeat sales will depend on your ability to professionally handle first-time customers quickly and smoothly. So it's important that you automate your business right from the start.

29. Suggest "Bookmarking" Your Web Site!

At the beginning of your sales message or site, suggest that the visitor "bookmark" your site for later reference. This encourages repeat sales! make sure that the title of your page descriptive so that it will make sense in a long list of bookmarks.

30. Hyper-link To Your Sales Message!

These hyper-links should be included strategically throughout your site..They should be included at points throughout free information at the end of each piece of content that you provide. The perfect time to present your sales message to a visitor is either during or right after you have given them interesting content.

31. Seek Feedback From Successful Online Marketers.

Get other marketers (successful) to check out you site. Did they find it easy to understand? Did they find it appealing to the eye? Did they get lost or find themselves stumbling into a dead end? Leave a message at webmaster forums asking web site designers to give a look at your site and make comments.

32. Keep Your Purpose In Focus At All Times!

Don't lose sight of why you developed your web site in the first place. Every aspect of your site should somehow contribute to your goal..be it to sell, inform, or simply entertain.

Be very careful about whose advice you take when designing your web site. Designing a web site that sells is very different to most web sites designed by "professional" web site designers. If a designer has not created successful web sites that sells, how can they guarantee success of your site?.

We hope our tips will make a difference to the success of your business strategy

Backend and up-sell products
Email marketing
Search engine marketing
Linking strategies
Newsletter or Ezine
Viral marketing
Using classified ads to reach customers
Public relations / press releases
Creating profitable alliances with joint ventures
Affiliate programs
Testing surveying and tracking
Competitive intelligence

For afree initial consultation on all aspects of your internet marketing campaign contact today