Increase Sales with Easy-To-Read Web PagesWritten by Leva Duell
Article Title: Increase Sales with Easy-To-Read Web Pages Author Name: Leva Duell Copyright: © 2003 Email: webmaster@profitablewebstrategies.com URL: http://www.profitablewebstrategies.com/easytoread.htm Word Count: 636 words Category: Web Design, Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Internet, Business, Marketing, fonts for web, typography Reprint Instructions: This article may be reprinted freely with bylines and URL. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Increase Sales with Easy-To-Read Web Pages Make sure you've made it easy for visitors to read your web pages. Web pages with readable text will generate more sales than fancy pages that are hard to read. Follow these design tips. Not only will your web pages be easier to read, but you'll keep potential buyers at your site and position yourself to increase sales. Keep Pages Short -- Especially Your Home Page - Put important content at top of your pages so it's visible on screen. Users may not scroll through lengthy pages. - In general, limit length of a web page to two screens. - Split up long pages into several pages. Layout - Use left aligned text rather than justified text. - Write short paragraphs (4-5 lines). - Indent paragraphs in sales letters. - Limit width of your web pages to fit your visitors' monitors. Your visitors donÕt want to scroll left to right to see your content. - Keep look, layout, navigation, typefaces, and colors consistent on all pages. Break up Copy - Avoid long pages of text. - Break up text with white space, color, columns, lines, bars, and graphics. - Break up copy into easy-to-read sections - Use subheadings and bulleted lists to highlight benefits. Color and Contrast - Use color sparingly. Too much color can be distracting. - Select a background color that contrasts with text color. - Avoid blue backgrounds when using blue links (the standard link color). - Avoid dark backgrounds. Dark text on a light background is easy to read. - Avoid text on multi-colored background images. Most background images will decrease readability of your text. - Use web-friendly colors. Colors that look bright on your monitor may appear dark on someone elseÕs and make your message unreadable. Typography - Avoid small type, reverse type (white text on dark background), and italics. - Avoid using UPPER CASE in your body copy. - Limit number of fonts in a web site to a maximum of three. - Use a type size that is geared to your target audience. For instance, use larger type for older readers. - Emphasize important words, headlines, and sentences by using color, bold, and different text sizes. But do so sparingly. Too much bold or color reduces impact. - Avoid underlining. Readers might think your underlined words or sentences are links. - Use standard fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, and Verdana. If youÕre using fonts your viewers donÕt have on their computers, their browsers will show substitute fonts and your web pages can look totally different on visitors' computers than how you intended them to look. - Avoid special characters like curly quotes, curly apostrophes, n-dashes, and m-dashes. These characters may convert into bogus characters in web sites.
| | Plan Your Web Site for ProfitsWritten by Leva Duell
Most businesses fail to plan for online success. Knowing your purpose, audience, and uniqueness are first steps to developing a successful web site. Follow these three steps to position your web site for Internet profits. Step 1: Determine Your Purpose The first step in planning a web site is to determine what you want to accomplish. Do you want to sell products and services, find new customers, establish credibility, or improve customer service? The purpose of your web site will affect its content and design. Depending on your goal, you may want to write articles to establish trust, provide a compelling sales letter, a catalog, product information, a secure online order form, and a shopping cart. Step 2: Define Your Ideal Customers, Their Needs and Concerns Many web sites are trying to attract everybody. DonÕt make this mistake. Your web site will be more profitable when focusing on your ideal prospects who are likely to buy your products or services. Ask following questions to create a profile of your ideal customers. - Who are your customers? Who will be visiting your web site? - Who wants or needs your products or services? - What are your customersÕ needs and concerns? - What is age range, gender, profession, industry, income level, education, and reading level of your ideal customers? - Why will they come to your site? - What problems do your products or services solve? - What information do they want? - Are most of your customers computer literate? - What computer, monitor, and screen resolution do they have? - What browsers do they use? - Do your visitors connect to Internet with a slow modem or a fast connection such as cable or DSL? After defining your ideal customers, target your web siteÕs content, message, and design directly to them. Here are some examples of how your audience affects design of your web site. If you are targeting seniors, make your text large. If your prospects are accountants, use a conservative design. Make your design colorful for children. Avoid movies, sounds, Flash animations, and Java programming if your clients have slow computers and Internet connections.
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