1. What’s purpose? The most fundamental thing to do before designing your web site is to define its purpose. Do you want to sell products directly to your customer through your web site, or collect contact details to develop future relationships? A lot of this will depend on products or services you sell, those with a larger price tag will require more relationship building than those that would count as an “impulse” purchase. People also use web sites to research products as well as purchase them so a company selling fridges for example may not be able to sell them through their web site (people don’t often buy fridges online!) but they may well be able to direct them to their nearest store where item they are interested in is in stock.

Identify purpose of your web site and make sure all actions you ask customer to take leads them to final outcome you have identified.

2. Define structure Once you have decided final outcome you want to achieve, whether it’s a sale, an enquiry, etc. work out a logical progression through process your customer would need to go through and structure your web site around it. Give customer information they will be looking for and help them find it easily and quickly. If you offer a large range of products, use a search facility, if your products carry a detailed specification, add a “click for spec” button which links to further information on an additional page, this way you will not slow those who are ready to buy, but offer additional info required by those still undecided.

Above all, keep structure and progression as simple and logical as possible.

3. Decide on an overall design layout. Most web sites have navigation down left hand of page, company logo graphic across top and content of page below and to right. Another common layout is to have both logo and navigation menu along top of page and page content across page beneath it. As these are most familiar layouts to users, it would be wise to stick with them as last thing you want to do is make your web site confusing to your customers.

Avoid too many moving graphics, as they are distracting, avoid large logo-only entrance pages (click here to enter site…) as they only delay user and avoid anything “cute” that may undermine your professional look.

4. Be careful with colours. Use contrasting colours for your text, black or blue on a white background is ideal. Don’t forget to check colours of your text links both before and after they’ve been visited, you don’t want them to disappear. Patterned backgrounds look dated and unprofessional and make your text harder to read, try to avoid them. If you have them, use your corporate colours in your logos, buttons, etc. and keep overall colour scheme inoffensive, clean and simple.

5. Be consistent. Put your links or buttons in a prominent place and keep them in same place on every page. Make sure your colours, navigation, typeface and text size are consistent on every page. Make sure user knows which page they are currently viewing and provide direct links to contact and home page on every page of your web site.

For more information about how to get interactive with your customers, take a look at our guide “Building Online Relationships” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html

The business principle of continued contact and online relationship building has given rise to popularity of online business blogs, forums and feedback opportunities. Interactive online communication define web site owners as experts in eyes of visitors, and serve as a promotional vehicle for other products and services that business seeks to sell. Continued, interactive contact can bring many benefits, such as:

·You'll find out what type of content visitors want to see at your web site. This will attract your visitors to revisit and read content.

·You'll find out how to improve existing products or services. This will attract new customers to buy from your business.

·You'll find out which products or services your customers would like to see you sell in future. This will increase your back end product sales.

·You'll find out how to improve your customer service. This will cut down on customer complaints and how to better resolve problems.

·You'll find out how to improve your sales letters or adverts. This will increase your sales, traffic or subscribers.

·You'll find out how to design your web site to fit your visitors’ needs and wants. This will increase time your visitors spend on your web site.

·You'll find out what kind of non-related products or services your customers would buy. This will help your business easily move into a different market.

·You'll find out how to better price your products. This will help you sell your products or services at a price that will pull most orders.

·You'll find out interests of your potential customers. This will inform you where to market and promote your products.

Getting Started So where do you start? Do you need a blog, a forum, or a feedback form? All have different uses and your selection will depend on needs of your particular business and your limitation with regard to time and/or budget. Below are some of options and some ideas for adding interactive and fresh content to your web site.

For more information about how to establish and maintain online relationships with your viewers and customers, get a copy of our guide “Building Online Relationships” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_4.html

Weblogs or Blogs A blog is basically a series of posts that appear by date posted like an online journal. Setup is minimal and interface is easy to learn- if you can use a word processing package, you can write a blog! Services like Moveable Type and Blogger make it incredibly easy for anyone to publish on web.

Blogs can be integrated seamlessly into your site so that they have same look and feel. You can use a blog to publish an events calendar or comment on developments and news from your industry. A blog can be strictly professional, announcing special offers or new product info or it can be casual and create a "personality" for your company.

What can a blog do for your business? Think about what your customers want to know.

To add interactivity, several blog programs come with a "comment" ability built in. This allows general users to create an account and post their comments to your blog. This is something to be careful of as you can get negative comments along with positive.

Forums While online forums are popular and perfect method of relationship building, starting a forum and maintaining one can be challenging, especially in beginning when members can be few and far between. The challenge for most new forum owners is to get beyond initial start up phase and move onto a phase where forum members themselves promote forum simply by posting.