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Web Site Design Tips
More Web Site Design Tips 81. Know What Your Customers Expect Customer expectations today are very high. They demand excellent service, fast response and low prices from virtually everyone they deal with. The main difference between buying something from you or from one of your competitors is often based on the "value added" services you provide. When your customers don't like driving into town to shop, being able to provide a website to buy from is the added value that can make all the difference. 82. Define Your Internet Goals One of the best web site design tips for helping you achieve your business objectives is to let your customers do business with you the Internet! You must clearly define the objectives for your web site. These objectives should then be aligned with your business objectives. Alignment is a pure cause and effect phenomenon. This means that if your site objective is achieved then the probability is pretty high that it will contribute to achieving your business objective. Therefore, the higher the probability the closer the alignment between objectives is. 83. Define Your Online Strategies Your Online strategies define the ways you plan to meet your online objectives. One strategy might be "offer the largest selection" or "provide the simplest online ordering process". Said another way, "our objective is to create (xx dollars) in online sales and we will achieve that by offering the largest catalog of products available anywhere." Your online strategies will nearly always emerge from an analysis of your competitive advantages (and your disadvantages) relative to your customers' expectations. Once you've defined these strategies, you can begin designing your website. You'll then rest assured that your web design is aligned with your business because you began with your business objectives and worked forward to the web site design (graphics, navigation, and features) which, in turn should be driven by your strategies. 84. When To Hire A Professional Web Designer If you are uncomfortable with this process then you should either do some reading on it or find a web site designer who understands this aspect of business website design. He or she will then be able to shephard you through the process and ensure that the site you wind up with is correctly focused on your business objectives. 85. The Balance Between Form and Matter Most businesses place great emphasis on their web site's graphics, creating a visually appealing site, but too many sites don't have nearly enough text. it is informative text, real content, that reassures visitors and gives the search engines something they can crawl. So, where do you start? Let's begin by looking at 5 things that you'll be able to accomplish with text. 86. You Establish Points of Interest Why should a customer elect to buy from you instead of from one of the numerous other businesses that are exactly like yours? If you instantly bristle at the notion that any other business could be "exactly like yours", then you may have discovered something important that needs to be communicated on your site. There is no need to criticize your competition - it isn't necessary, nor in most cases, advisable. All you need to do is tell your visitors why your approach to business is unique. in case you specialize in a certain approach or area, tell them how you do it - and why you do it. By establishing your unique points of difference you help your visitors become informed buyers of the products and services you offer. 87. Satisfy Their Thirst For Information Numerous studies have demonstrated that searchers almost always use the Internet first to do their basic research, only later returning to either convert on the site or look for your business. To the extent you anticipate and provide quality answers to those research questions, giving your visitors precisely what they are searching for, you begin to nurture the relationship, gaining their trust and future loyalty. In order to create this kind of quality content, just ask yourself, "What is it that I'd need to know if I were looking to buy this kind of product or service"? When you've answered that, try to think of several different ways to serve up the information. You could also try adding a "Frequently Asked Questions" page. An FAQ page is a powerful marketing tool that addresses the questions you think your customers will, or should ask. Often simply by raising the issue and then providing information you'll be able to establish your point of difference. When your visitors do research on other sites, they might then search for more information on issues, feautres, and benefits that they learned about while on your site. If your competitor's web site doesn't adequately cover something they became interested in, you'll have gained a bit of an edge. 88. Demonstrate Your Authority By Writing Articles Even if you don't consider yourself to be an expert in your field, you probably know a lot more than you ever give yourself credit for. Odds are that your visitors will appreciate any expertise you have to share with them. By writing articles (of course, only those related to your business) and then publishing them on your web site you can be in the enviable position of being viewed as an authority figure. Consider asking your visitors for their email addresses in exchange for access to the articles. You'll be building a targeted list of contacts that lets you develop ongoing relationships with qualified prospects. You can send them special offers, as well as continuing to provide them with useful information on an ongoing basis. 89. Increase Your Personal Visibility In the "eyes" of the search engines, the best web sites are comprised of many, many HTML files, each one rich in text. If any of your articles should mention a topic on which you hold more information, then embed links to that additional information in a manner something like like this: "Click here to learn about painting with water-based paint." On the page containing that information, be sure you have placed a "title" tag with an appropriate title. For example, in this case, "Painting with water-based Paint". This will help the search engines index your content which, then, can provide you with some visibility. More importantly, you'll discover that other web sites begin to link to pages that contain valuable information. By having a lot of sites pointing directly to your articles on painting techniques You'll be helping artists locate your online art supply store. This will greatly assist your natural (i.e. unpaid) search engine rankings. 90. Figure Out What Your Visitors Find Interesting Another benefit from adding lots of text based content to your web site is that you can discover the issues and topics That are of the greatest interest to your visitors. With Google Analytics, the report on "Top Content" (You can find it listed under "Content Performance" on the Content Optimization page) displays the number of visits to your web site that led to page views for each page as well as average time visitors spent on each page. Another report, "Content by Titles", displays the same information, only grouped by each page title. Therefore, if you have articles containing multiple pages of content, and every page contains the same "title" tag, the Content By Titles report will display the percent of total visits and of total pageviews pertaining to those articles. You might also want to look at the "Site Overlay" report (located under "Navigational Analysis", also within the Content Optimization area) to see which links your visitors are clicking on the most. This report will give you an idea about what is of greatest interest to your visitors, given a fixed set of options on any page. You can try to optimize your content mix by using whatever you glean from these reports. If you keep a close eye on these analytics, you will a learn a lot about your visitors and then be able to give them exactly the kinds of information they are searching for.
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