Inconsistent DesignWritten by Jeff Colburn
One problem I often see on websites is inconsistent design. This not only looks unprofessional, but it also makes a site difficult for visitors to use. I recently visited a site, and each page was so different from every other page that I thought I was being sent to different websites. I found it so disconcerting that I left site after going to three pages and have no plans to go back. Do you think I would every buy a product or service from this kind of site? Not likely.You want to make your site have a consistent design. By this I mean that all links and contact information should be in same place on every page. Each page should have same design and colors too. A minor change in color isn't really a problem, but be sure that it's necessary. A change in color or layout should have a definite purpose and not be done just because you feel like it or want to show people what a great website designer you are. Here are a few design tips to remember when creating a website. Don't use blinking text. Everyone hates it because it's so darned annoying. Don't use more than 3 font styles on a site. Ideally, you should use only one font for entire website. You can use a fancy font for your site title, but be sure to make it into a graphic, such as a JPEG file. If you use a fancy font, it must be on viewer's computer or it will be replaced by viewer's default font. Keep italic and bold to a minimum. Use bold to highlight something important on a page, but if you use it too often people will ignore it. Most people find italicized letters hard to read, so if you must use italic, do so sparingly.
| | Make Your Site Easy To NavigateWritten by Jeff Colburn
Competition on Internet is fierce. Just a mouse click away are hundreds of other sites offering same products/services that you offer. So when all your hard work has paid off and a potential client has found your site, you want to be sure they can easily find what they want so they can buy it from you. According to Giga research group, 70% of all web site visitors leave a site without finding what they came for. Imagine what will happen to your bottom line if 70% of all prospective clients can't find what they are looking for? You work hard to get people to your site, don't let poor website design make almost three quarters of them leave empty handed.To make your site easy to navigate you need to lay it out logically. This will make your products and services easy to find. To start out with, group similar items together. Let's say you sell shirts, pants and coats. Group all of your coats together, then pants and then shirts. Don't list a few coats, then some pants, then a couple more coats, then some shirts. A person may go to your site looking for coats. They scroll down page and see a couple of coats, then see some shirts and figure that those are all coats you have. They didn't see what they wanted and left, but if they had scrolled down one more screen, they would have found exact coat they wanted. A better solution is to list all of your coats, then cross sell. You could say, "If you need a shirt, use this link," then send them off to your shirt page. Or to be more specific, next to each coat (or shirt or pants) say, "Use this link to find shirts and pants that go perfectly with this coat." You can have link go to a page with shirts and pants whose style and color go with that coat. Not only will this let your prospective clients find all related products and make upselling easier, but if they don't know how to match colors or styles then you will put them at ease by making selections for them. If you have products or services that can't be grouped together, or you just have a huge list of items, then use a search engine. Most webhosts offer option of having a search engine on your site. This make finding things on large sites easier. Many people will use a search engine without even looking around a site to find what they want. They just find using a search engine to be faster and easier. There are other ways to make your site easy to navigate. One is to have a site map. It can be as simple as a list of links to each one of your pages, or I have also seen them get more complicated, so that below each link to a page are all main links on that page. Using clothing example above, you would have a link to coat page, then sublinks to wool coats, polyester coats and so on. I often use site maps to get around large sites, when they offer them. They are easy to put together and update and can be very useful if you don't want a search engine on your site or as another tool that visitors can use besides a search engine.
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