With millions of sites online today, a homemade looking site is a true market killer. A professional site makes you look professional!
But what makes a site professional? That question varies from designer to designer. But I’ve put together a list of 5 ideas that I feel are very important for your website.
Know your customer. What does your customer need to be a satisfied customer? Do they need facts on your product or service? Do they need pages of information on how to use your product? Spend some time brainstorming on how you sell to your customer, and create those pages on your site. Know your product. If you can’t describe your product in simple terms, why will your customer want to buy? The more you can write your text to appeal to your customer and make them want to buy, the higher your sales will be. This may sound like an obvious statement, but many sites out there make their products too complicated, and lose the sale because the customer just doesn’t understand what the site is selling. Make your site visually appealing. I’m still amazed at the number of sites that don’t use follow through. Your navigation needs to be a constant, and remain the same on every page. It must be easy to maneuver from one page to the next – and back again. Colors must be the same on every page. Text size and font must remain the same. Use photos to break up the text. Create an offer. Don’t hide your offer. Make it visible. You should never have more than 3 main goals for your website. People get confused if there are too many options. If you want people to sign up for an ezine, create a sign up box that appears on every page. If you want people to order your products, create a product catalog that people can click to on every page. And make the order process easy, from beginning to end. Be consistent. Creating a brand within your company is all about consistency. Do you use your logo, coloring and tag lines on both your brochures and your website? Does your voice mail convey the same message that you do in person and on your website? People are receiving thousands of messages every day from different companies. If you want them to recognize you, consistency is a must.
