October 20, 2005

The Design of Your Web Site: How Important It Is

When I first built smallbiztechnology.com the site looked SO bad. The colors were simply horrible. Really. However, over time, thanks to a lot of input from my audience I'd like to think it is a LITTLE better.

What about your web site? Are you wondering why customers still keep calling for directions even though you know that you have a page for directions to your office. Do you wonder why customers keep calling or emailing for the status of their orders even though they can find this information online?

One reason could be that your web site is not designed well. (Another reason could be that the tools you have online are no good or that customers don't want to use your online tools).

If you design your web site yourself, it's often not going to look as good as a site designed by a professional web site developer.

Dr. Ralph Wilson of WilsonWeb writes What does your website navigation system have to do with marketing? Answer: The ease with which people find what they are looking for on your site is directly associated with
their impression of your company, what marketers refer to as your "brand." Your brand is strengthened by a good customer feeling about your site and damaged by visitor frustration.

Usability experts encourage you to use redundant navigation systems, that is a number of different ways for visitors to find their way through your site. The larger your site, the more important this is.

I've just completed a redesign of the Web Marketing Today site (www.wilsonweb.com), a large site of about 2,300 webpages. It's easy to get lost and overwhelmed. As a result I employ a number of types of navigation systems:

1. Left-side menu
2. Tabs at the top of every page
3. Drop-down menus from each tab
4. Search function for both the webpages on the site and the
Research Room (15,000 annotated links to articles and resources
in the field of Internet marketing and e-commerce)
5. Sectional links at the bottom of the page
6. Site introductions for various types of visitors
7. Site map

0 comments