Elicit a
response
You've got to make sure
visitors have every opportunity to contact you. The opportunity to contact or
instigate communications should be clear on
every page. Do not miss the impulse buyer.
Take extra
care in designing your site so it looks
professional, is easy to navigate, and gets
marketed properly.
If your home page fails to entice because
the images are too large,
you're using sound files for no reason, the page
takes forever to download, there's offensive
material,
the text isn't readable, and so on
- then your visitors will hit the Back button
faster than a politician changes position on the
issues.
Navigation
of a site is consider to be one of the most
importance aspect of a site. You DO NOT want
visitors to get lost in your site.
There are three things a home page should
convey to the visitor:
1. The
site's purpose and call to contact
2. What kind of content is contained in
the site
3. How to find that content (Navigation)
When
designing a navigation system on a website,
you need to consider the following factors:
1. The
first screen
2. Navigation tools - buttons, text links
and sitemaps
(avoid frames if you can)
3. Consistency
|
The
primary purpose of a business
website
is to elicit a response. |
|
So to expand a
little .......
1. EFFICIENT
NAVIGATION.
Make it easy for the user to navigate your site.
If you are selling something, let the client
find it in three clicks. Make certain there is
always an obvious way to return to the home page
from anywhere within your site.
2. ORGANIZED MESSAGE.
The user should be immediately presented with a
description of your site ... what it's for and
what's in it.
3. MARKETING.
Basic marketing rules apply to websites as they
do to bricks and mortar stores. Have a marketing
plan and apply it
Click here for standard marketing advice
4. LOADING TIME.
Users will not wait. You have about 10-seconds
to catch and keep a visitor. Your home page
should load quickly. Ensure this by keeping
graphics small and backgrounds simple and by
using height and width tags with every graphic.
The height/width tags will force the text to
load first giving the user something to read
while the graphics load. It is also a good idea
to use ALT tags with the graphic tag so that the
graphic is identified to the user while it
loads.
5. UPDATE FREQUENTLY.
Ensure that visitors will return to your site by
constantly updating its content. The home page
should include the date your site was last
revised.
6. GIVE SOMETHING BACK.
It has become commonplace on the Internet to
give you visitors useful related information in
addition to what you are "selling." Most common
example is to provide links to other, similar
sites on the Internet.
7. LINKS
Try and obtain links from an existing successful
web site to your new site. This will help being
recognised on the Search Engines. |
