Go To Web Design Home | Add to Favorites
3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website
Before you start worrying about marketing your website on the internet it always pays dividends to look at the website itself and get the fundamentals right before looking to shout about it from the virtual mountain-tops. You may already have thought about the following 3 ways and some of you may already have them in place on your website. If so ? congratulations ? you're well on the way to having a website that will bring you more business. So here they are then ? the 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website.. 1. You're Fishing For Visitors ? You'll Need This To Hook Them. Ever been surfing on a website that held your attention and then the phone rings? You take the call, take some notes, get distracted, visit another website and before you know it you've forgotten all about the website you were viewing. It happens all the time and if you don't have a Bookmarking tool on your website it will be happening with the people that come to your website. A Bookmarking tool is just a simple link or logo that your visitors can click on in order to bookmark your website or add it to their favourites. It is best to have the button located on the homepage but an even better option is to have a bookmarking button on every page so a visitor can actually bookmark each specific page of your website for safe-keeping. Look to the left of this article and you will see the bookmarking button we use ? click on it to see how it adds this specific page to your favourites ? nifty eh? 2. 'X' Marks The Spot. Visitors come to your website and if you're lucky ? they like it and click beyond the homepage. Excellent. But they can't find what they're looking for. Uh oh, you could be in trouble. There's a lot of information on your website and Mr. Visitor doesn't have time to sift through it all to find what he's looking for. You'd better hope that he's either very patient or that you've provided him with a simple map to help him get to the 'treasure' he is looking for. A Site Map is an essential item ? particularly on larger websites. There is nothing more frustrating than hunting around for something and wasting time when just a simple one pager that presents a summary of all the information on your website could be used. A Site Map should be reachable from all pages of your website in just one click and should have clickable links on it so that a visitor can zoom straight through to their desired location without having to hunt around. If you don't give them a map your visitors may become frustrated searching around for that desired piece of information and they may leave your website never to return. 3. Don't Make Your Visitors Have To Write An Email To Contact You If you are inviting enquiries or contact from visitors to your website you need to provide them with a way of doing this that is as easy as possible for them. Just posting your email address on the website is not the best solution. Why? Because when they click on it they need to then create an email from scratch. Do you know how busy your visitors are? They hardly have time to read the content of your homepage ? never mind create an email from scratch. The solution? You need to use a simple form. A form enables you to standardise the responses that you receive and it also makes it very simple for your visitors to get in touch with you ? all they need to do is pop in their name, email address and tick a few boxes and that's it. Making it easy for your visitors to contact you isn't the only reason that using a form is a great idea. Doing so means you can get some information back from each person that fills in the form. You can ask them how they discovered your website, which other websites they like to visit ? you can ask them anything! Anything that is going to help you learn more about them, more about who they are and more about what will make them buy from you. You think they would tell you all this if they were creating an email from scratch? No ? of course they wouldn't! That's why you need a form. Mike Cheney, www.magnet4web.com (c) About The Author Are You Getting Your MagnetMail? - Mike Cheney's World-Famous Free Magic Mail To Make Your Website Magnetic, Get Yours Now: www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=magnetmail
10 Web Site Design And Writing No-nos
1. Don't load your web site with a lot of high tech clutter. Your visitors may miss your whole sales message.2. Don't use unnecessary words or phrases on your site. You only have so much time to get your visitor's attention and interest; make ever word count.3. Don't make the mistake that everyone...
Keep Your Navigation Consistent!
One of the single most important aspects of effective navigation is consistency. Why? There's a simple reason.Visitors want familiarity.They are more comfortable and more trusting if they know things are going to remain the same from page to page. They have a certain sense of confidence from knowing what to expect.If a visitor can quickly become familiar with your navigation, it's much si...
How To Shop For A Web Design Firm?
While few companies can boast as we do that our first ten clients are still with us today, many companies often change Web design firms to get a new perspective on how their Web presence could look and perform. The following paragraphs serve as a Buyer's Guide to...
|
 |
|
|
To Hire Or Not To Hire A Website Designer
In the early years of the internet the actual design of a website was either very basic or had to be done using a software package that needed a specialist to use it. Not surprisingly, website designers were i... |  |
| Do You Want To Save Time With Your Web Design?
It starts off simply; a few HTML pages, a few hyperlinks, some affiliate links. Your mother is proud of her clever son.Then you install a forum, some more content, maybe consider using a Content Management System (CMS).Before you know it, you have a monster on your hands. This monster is eating up your time ... | |
| Why Should You Care About Your Web Site Colors?
**How Colors are Used in web design:**Demarcates screen elements into groups- You can pu ... | |
| Basic Graphic Design
Wether you design your business brochures, flyers, web page, or ads there are some things that you need to know. There are some basic graphic design principles that those of us trained in the commerc... | |
| Bad Design Characteristics For A Website
Making a poorly designed website is one of the easiest things you can do as a webmaster! You barely need to try! If you want to run a successful high traffic website there are many different elements of design that you need to implement, and ones you need to avoid.This article will describe some of the major design flaws in many new websites. Design flaws that will reduce your traffic flow, reduce your amount of loyal viewers, and generally annoy people. It is my hopes that be identifying these negative web design attributes that people will be able to reduce the usage of them, thus designing a better more profitable website for themselves.Excessive use of FramesIn the early days of the web, frames were a normal thing to see. They were all over the place! However with more recently d... | |
| Choosing A Color Scheme
When you begin the design of your Web site, one of the first things you need to do is decide on a color scheme. Although choosing colors seems like a relatively easy proposition, it's not easy at all. In fact, it's hard.One of the pluses we have as Web designers is that millions of colors are at our disposal. Unlike the print world, we do not have to pay for each color we use. If we want to use a specific hue of yellow, for example, all we need to know is the hexadecimal code for that particular color.One of the pitfalls of having millions of colors to pick from is that some people go crazy and use every color imaginable on their Web site. This is a big no-no. Not only does it look unprofessional to use 20 different colors on your home page, but depending on the colors you choose, your page may not be readab... | |
| Mini Site Or Content-based Web Site?
Are you in a dilemma whether to create a mini site or acontent-based web site for your new product or ... | |
| Pages To Include In Your Website
What pages need to be included on your website? The answer varies for each type of business and depends on how informative you want your website to be for potential clients. Below is a list of sample pages for you to review while you plan out your website.Create a different name for these website sections if you'd like to add more personality to your site! For example, your "About Us" page can be titled, "Who We Are" or "Get to Know Us".Your business website, at minimum, should include the following pages:? Home Page - (For more information on the design of your home page, click here) (www.elf-design.com/ articleHomePage.html)? About Us and, if appropriate, About Our President/Principal? Our... | |
|
|
