Are your SEO efforts going to waste?Written by Derek Croote
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long and complicated process that can be highly rewarding if done correctly. SEO is not a waste of time, but can be if your site doesn’t appeal to visitors or function properly. Your potential customer will be turned off if your site lacks trustworthiness, an eye pleasing color scheme and easy to use navigation. Why lose visitors and possible sales because of a small design flaw or unappealing color scheme? Those visitors could have resulted in sales if those small imperfections were fixed.As I arrive from your high position in search engines looking for your product, I want to be able to trust company I am buying from. People are very leery with making purchases on Internet, and even more so from sites they don’t know a great deal about. You want to gain trust from visitor with guarantees, a professional design and color scheme, testimonials and by any other way. If your site doesn’t boast its trustworthiness and make me feel secure, do you think I will purchase your product? No. Visitors are especially leery when they are required to give credit card information. Make them feel protected, boast about your privacy policy, encrypted servers and whatever else you have set up. Be enthusiastic about your site’s security. I need to be able to find what I want and navigate to where I need to go FAST after I arrive at your site via search engines. Some visitors get lost and frustrated with poor navigation and will leave your site without a second thought. Do not leave your visitor with a bad taste in their mouth! Allow them to flow through your site with ease and comfort. If your navigation is confusing your potential customer will likely leave and travel to one of other three billion web sites on Internet. Speed is also a factor in navigation. Visitors don’t want to sit there for twenty or thirty seconds while your page loads. Don’t make them wait. Cut down on size of your pages and graphics.
| | Fundamentals of Good Web DesignWritten by Ric Shreves
There are no objective standards for Web design, but that’s a shame. While novel and inventive interface design is to be encouraged, bottom line for most sites is usability. When design starts to intrude on usefulness, decisions is easy – make it easy for user. Without delving heavily into programming nuts and bolts of design implementation, we offer following modest proposals: 1. Use Consistent Navigation Give users consistent navigation throughout site. The importance of this simple point can’t be overstated, as newbies invariably get lost. Moreover, you should try to accommodate users with old systems and users with disabilities. Some users disable java, and others use text only browsers, so provide text only nav buttons to accommodate all users (or provide an alternate site).2. Provide a Site Map Just plain common courtesy, if you ask me. When I am in a hurry, last thing I want to do is dig through a hierarchical Web site structure to search for something that I know exists on site. 3. Provide a Contacts Page You would be amazed at how many companies have ZERO contact information on their Web sites. Moreover, a generic e-mail link is NOT sufficient; you need to give people addresses, phone numbers, etc. In order for Web to deliver on its promise, it must be used to increase transparency of organizations. 4. Listen to Users Give your users a method for providing feedback. It’s true, people rarely use feedback option, but its also true they really hate it when they are not given option. The usability of your feedback system is a key when problems strike; a good system eases tensions and a bad system escalates tensions dramatically. (Do we need to point out that timely response to feedback forms is also a necessity?) 5. Build an Intuitive Interface The Ideal Interface must meet two criteria: (1) Newbies must be confronted with an easy-to-learn consistent system while, (2) Experienced users should be able to navigate site quickly – design should not impede or interfere navigation by an experienced user who is familiar with site.
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