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Web Site Design Tips
More Web Site Design Tips 61. Alignment Alignment is a concept that ensures that all your processes (including those in your web site) are in sync with the goals of your business. Put simply, you have to be sure that every section of your site works toward achieving one or more of your business objectives. This should be the focus of each section of your web site as well as everything that flows from it. Without clear alignment you will never have an effective web site. It may function well, technically, and you may win design awards, but it won't actually help your business. 62. Clear Purpose To achieve alignment, every section of the site needs a purpose that is clearly and simply understood by its visitors. "Purpose" is the cornerstone of each section. Purpose will define your site's "look and feel" (i.e. graphic design) as well as the content contained in each section. A clear purpose will help you create relevant content and it will help your site's visitors understand exactly what your site is all about. One of the most important web site design tips that you can follow is to make sure your web site clearly defines its purpose. Don’t make your customers figure it out by themselves. They will usually get it wrong. 63. Force Action Great web site designers understand that navigation is one of the most important elements of web design. However, most web designers think of navigation as being just the buttons and links that people use to locate information. The real importance of web site navigation is to ensur that site visitors know what is expected of them, i.e. what specific action is required. In this context we are not referring to the traditional "call to action" from a marketing point of view. What it means is ensuring that the specific “purpose” of the web site page section is crystal clear and that the desired action you want them to take is easily understood. In other words, when you wish the customer to contact you, you should make it simple and obvious. The great majority of web site visitors like knowing what is expected of them. They like having a clear path laid out for them. Even people who fancy themselves as free thinkers and usually prefer making their own way like clear paths to the information they are seeking. You can't imorove your web site's effectiveness if your visitors do nothing. 64. Content Focused on the Relationship A relationship is necessary for any kind of transaction to take place. In the real world these relationships are taken for granted. A customer enters your place of business, talks to someone, experiences the physical environment and then purchases something. In a virtual world there are no people to create relationships. In the virtual world you encounter the non-relationship where users can wander around anonymously on your web site, carefully avoiding creating any relationships. These web site design tips make it absolutely necessary to focus your content on creating and developing a relationship… some form of connection between the visitor and your web site. All relationships are based on two specific criteria: mutual trust and an emotional context. A visitor has to place their trust in your business and they also have to feel comfortable doing business with you (a positive emotional context). While a visitor's own perceived level of desire for your products and services may have an effect on this emotional context, it is your web site's actual content that must work to effectively capitalize on that desire by creating positive emotional support for that desire. Providing visitors with the benefits of your products/services is just one of the many ways to enhance that desire. 65. Measurements If you don't measure it you can't improve your web site. If you lack measurements you'll never know whether a change to your web site helped or hurt its effectiveness. So how do you know it's improving if you don’t keep score? Certain effective measurement will tell you if your site is helping you achieve your business objectives. 66. More On Aligning... ...your site with your business objectives. Alignment gets everything moving in the same direction. Alignment is a very simple concept. Just think of it in terms of going to the corner pharmacy. If your left foot is headed north and your right foot is headed south, you'll have a pretty hard time getting to the pharmacy. If the pharmacy is north of your current position and both feet are pointing south there's also a very small likelihood that you will arrive at the pharmacy. (You'll have to walk around the entire world in order to get there. It's exactly the same with these web site design tips, especially this one. When all elements of a complex organization or situation are aligned, the path is usually easy to follow. It's just as true in business. If you want a chance at achieving your business goals then all the elements of your company must be aligned toward those goals. Achieving alignment in web site design dictates that you know how your site is aligned with your business objectives. Without this alignment, your web development efforts will be hit-or-miss at the very best. How do we create alignment? Look at alignment as a string of cause and effect activities linked together. To illustrate:
The first step in creating a good web site design is to find out "What are your business objectives?" Once your business objectives have been articulated you can start developing a set of web site goals that are aligned to those objectives. (e.g. if your web site's objectives are met you will be that much closer to meeting your business objectives). As we go work our way through the web site development process we must constantly ask "Does this help achieve the objectives of the site as wel as those of the business?" We then follow the cause and effect of each web site section through to its primary business objective. 67. Exactly What Does This Page Do For My Business? Achieving alignment means that when the site is completed, you will have a clear cause and effect path from each site section of your site to your primary business objectives. Put simply, the web site is doing all the things that are going to help you achieve your business objectives. If you have a web site that is 100 percent effective at getting your visitors to take some action that doesn't ultimately have a positive effect on your business objectives, the web site is still zero percent effective. Results always vary from site to site depending on exactly which actions you want your visitors to take as well as the strength of your site's content to create some form of relationship, and provide incentives, and encourage actions. However, measurements that are on-going and accurate let you calculate how effective your web site is. They also let you gauge roughly the relative effect of changes you make to the web site. You'll be able to tell if the changes helped or hurt the effectiveness. Alignment ensures that to the extent your web site is effective, it will also be effective at helping you achieve your business objectives. 68. To Be Effective Content Must Be Aligned With Goals It's practically impossible to complete a task successfully if you don't know what it is you are supposed to be doing. Web surfers are, by their nature, people who are usually not very tolerant of badly designed web sites. Moreover, evidence suggests that most web surfers spend 80 percent of their time on 20 percent of the web sites they visit. Four out of every five web sites get more than just a cursory look before they fall victim to the "back" button. Every section of your site's design should carry purpose that is obvious, that is quickly and easily understood by your visitors. Nobody likes to be confused. While a tiny portion of the web population are die hard problem-solvers who will take their time to figure out why a web page exists, most web site visitors will quickly click the back button. As you go through the web site design process, and these web site design tips, you must scrutinize every page of the site by defining it's primary objective. Then use that purpose as your guide to the development of content for that page or section. Understanding what drives each site section frees us to concentrate our web oage content on what the section is trying to accomplish. This, in turn, enables us to focus the section on the desired action from the visitor. If you are not following most of these web site design tips, and alignment in particular, it is very likely that your web site design is not creating action and it will not be effective. A clearly defined purpose and desired action helps your visitors know what they can expect and provides an emotional and logical progression through the entire site. This direct simplicity makes it easier for your site visitors to take the most wanted actions. It also means far less confusion for which you'll be rewarded with fewer abandoned visits. Reach the Transaction Threshold - This happens in your store when working with a customer, over the phone, or on your web site. This makes it essential that your site design leads to action. Action can be something as simple as clicking on a button or as complex as completing a full online order. The objective of each web page's design must be to supply the necessary incentives to motivate the visitor to take action. This has to be the major objective of your site development efforts. You may have the most gorgeous site on the Internet, the finest products, the best customer service and the lowest prices but if you cannot motivate your visitors to take some action it is simply a lot of wasted effort. Unfortunately, for most web sites, the preferred (by the visitors) action is hitting the back button. Therefore it is imperative to build web pages that clearly announce their purpose AND lead to the preferred action. The unique design and content of each page should entice the visitor to take the desired action that will meet the defined objective of the page. To that end, you should use your understanding of creating and tracking actions to help define:
69. Building Lasting Online Relationships This goes slightly beyond the scope of web site design tips but it is important that we discuss it here anyway. Transactions are only possible if a real relationship exists. And everything on your site serves to effect the relationships between your visitors and your business. The strength of this relationship is usually a deciding factor in whatever action may be taken by your visitor. Relationships evolve based on two concepts; mutual trust and an emotional context. Your visitors must have a level of trust for your in order for any transaction to occur; trust that you'll honor your word. Emotional context comprises all the emotional interaction your visitor experiences on your site (likewise with your business if they have ever bought anything from you before). The more pleasant the emotional context they experience, the more likely that they go through with a transaction. Web sites are, by their nature, cold, impersonal surrogates for your business. Therefore it is crucial that you provide some form or proof that the visitor can place their trust in you and experience the most positive emotional context possible. Relationships (mutual trust and positive emotional context) are formed in part via your site's professional appearance/design, the ease of navigation, the relevance and consistency of your site's content, even the colors and textures you select. These are some of the most tricky elements of web design when attempting to foster a relationship. It is a lot easier when your web site design is focused on alignment with your business objectives, a clear purpose for each page/section and motivating visitor action. If you create content with these things in mind it is a lot easier to provide the necessary enticements to induce the preferred actions. 70. If It Can't Be Measured, It doesn't Exist Creating a truly effective web site is an iterative process of Change --> Then Measure --> Then Evaluate You may have the one of the most effective web sites on the Internet but if you don't measure it's effectiveness you'll never even know about it. Effective sites are not the result of a master designer with superhuman creative talent and the longest list of web site design tips. Effective web sitess are created by following a simple process that involves making changes, then measuring the effect of those changes, and evaluating that effect. And then making more changes, etc. Building an effective site requires you to track its effectiveness. And, while there are thousands of things you might track, there are just a few that you absolutely must track. The most important of these are visitor actions. A sound web design process ensures that you are tracking all the RIGHT measures. Measures that will inform you beyond any doubt how effective your site actually is. Or you can hire a consultant to convene a focus group of "pretend" visitors to find out what they think. Or you can ascertain the same thing in just a few minutes by looking at your abandon rate...this is the number of people who come to your web site and then immediately hit the back button. Since an effective web site is determined by how well it helps you meet your business goals, the only way your site can do this is by providing the appropriate enticements to motivate your visitors to take your preferred actions, i.e. to do things. By monitoring those actions you'll have almost all the information you'll ever need to continually improve your web site's effectiveness.
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