I'm sure many of these sites are making nice sales, but how many more are they losing?

There are sites with a sales letter and maybe one or two graphics making sales around clock. You stop by, see what they have to offer, and either you buy or you don't.

They're saying, "Hey come as you are, you're always welcome."

I know that there are a lot of goodies out there to impress visitors with, but I'd rather feel comfortable and welcome.

If you expect me to spend my money make it easy. I'm not looking to spend rest of night making upgrades and changing browsers etc. so I can hand you my money.

I may be old fashioned, but if you want my money, make me feel comfortable. I don't need to be told I have to change to hand you my money.

I'm actually glad there are so many sites I can't view, it saves me money.

Wishing You Success

If you want someone to click on a link, then make it look like a standard link by making font blue and underlined.

Even then you may have to actually tell your visitors to Click Here. It may seem redundant, but we have found by testing that more people will click if you tell them specifically what you want them to do.

8. DESIGN YOUR PAGE FOR A 600 PIXEL WIDTH

It's a big pet peeve of ours and we know that many Web site visitors hate it too. We're talking about creating your Web pages wider than 600 pixels.

A Web page that is designed wider than 600 pixels may look great on YOUR computer, but there's a good chance that your visitors have to scroll their screens left and right to see your pages. If they do, most will leave.

Keep in mind, also, that many people surf web with their windows minimized, which means that they will see even less of your pages.

By designing your pages specifically for a 600 pixel width, you will overcome 90% of this problem, and your visitors will have no reason to leave because of frustrating scrolling back and forth.

9. DESIGN YOUR PAGE FOR 800 RESOLUTION

You may have a super, high resolution computer where 1024 resolution or higher looks great. You may also have perfect vision and have no problem reading teeny, tiny type that higher resolutions produce, but many of your visitors won't have their monitors set to higher resolution, and many can't or won't try to read tiny type on Web sites.

Most people at this point have their monitors set to 800 resolution. You can't get them to change their monitor settings to accommodate your particular Web pages by saying, "This site is best viewed at 1024 resolution. Please reset your monitor for that resolution." No one is going to do that for you. They will just leave your site.

You want to create your Web site so that it will be easily read by majority of your visitors. In future this may change, but for now majority says 800 resolution.

10. ORGANIZE YOUR WEB SITE

It's important that your Web site visitors feel comfortable navigating throughout your Web site.

Think about a book. Imagine if there were no table of contents, no chapters, no division by subject matter, just a hodgepodge of paragraphs and pages. Not many people would go through frustration and trouble to read it.

Most books are broken down into logical sections or chapters so that readers can find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

Your Web site should be organized same way.

Break down your information into logical sections or departments.

We have a department for articles, one for tutorials, one for motivation quotations and stories, one for checklists, one for our store, etc.

Once you click on one of our department links, you will go to an index page for that department.

Plus, we put all of links to our departments on every page of our Web site, so that our visitors can get to any other department with one click of mouse.

If possible, put a Site Map page on your Web site. This page will show your visitors all of your departments and all of pages within each department all on one page. It can be formatted as a simple outline.

Make it easy for your visitors to find what they want on your Web site and they will stay longer and come back more often.

11. ORGANIZE YOUR WEB PAGES

It's important for you to establish a simple and consistent format for pages of your Web site.

Nothing looks more unprofessional than a mish mash of different looking pages on a Web site. Don't use a two column format on some of your pages and a three or four column format on others. Create a consistent format for your pages and then stick to it.

You should use a consistent layout for your pages. If you want to put your links to your other pages in a left or right hand column, then do that for all of your pages. If you want to put a title at top of each page, then select a font, color and size for those titles and use them for all of your pages.

While variety may be spice of life, consistency is glue that holds your Web site together. Use variety in your content and your ideas, but inconsistency in formats destroys trust and comfort in your visitors.

Pick up a few books and look at how chapters are laid out. You will find a logical, and consistent layout, fonts, graphics etc. throughout most professional books.

Joe Gracia - Give to Get Marketing http://www.givetogetmarketing.com