Make your website work harder for you23 May 2005
A good website can attract new customers, keep them coming back and cut your costs of doing business. But a bad website will result in lost opportunities and upset customers. So how do you make your website a success? The following tips should help you make the most of your online presence - whether you already have a website, or are thinking of building one:
Think about your users
Every business has aims for it's website - to drive up sales, cut costs and so on. But it is vital to think about the people who will be coming to the website. Who are they likely to be? A site designed for technically aware buyers of a complex product will be very different to a site marketing a simple service to relatively uninformed buyers. What do they need to do once they are there? Make key tasks obvious and easy to complete.
Keep it clean
Too many small business websites use a variety of speckled backgrounds, unreadable fonts, flashy buttons and animated icons. This only serves to distract and confuse your users. A simple, clean, professional design will do more for your business than any number of gimmicks.
Catch them quickly
Your users should know the content and purpose of your website within the first few seconds. Decide the message you want to get across to your users and design your front page with that in Put your most important messages near the top left of the page and the least important content at the bottom right. A short mission statement or summary of your business can be helpful.
Your front page should load quickly
Slow web pages can web very frustrating for users and to the extent they may leave your site before you can engage them with your key messages. You need to ensure that your front page especially loads quickly. Large photographs are usually the cause of slow page downloads. You can reduce the size of your photo files with professional-standard software package like Fireworks or PhotoShop.
Easy navigation
Make sure your pages are clearly labelled and laid out on the page in a way even the most basic Internet user can understand.
Update regularly
People are more likely to come back to your website if you update the contents regularly. If you don't have the time to update regularly, avoid putting time-sensitive information on your pages. Out of date information will only confuse and discourage your users.
