Believe it or not, the success of your online marketing success is greatly dependent on the overall design of your website. After all, your website would be the primary carrier of your business message in cyberspace, hence, on its shoulders rest the willingness of your visitors to trust whatever it is you will be selling.
Let’s put it this way…
John Doe wants some information on dog grooming techniques. He hops from one website to the next, hoping to discover what he is looking for. He encounters website A. Website A is filled with uneven space partitions, a confusing navigation bar, and endless links pointing to other pages that he is not interested with.
What do you think John Doe would do? Stay, when he could easily skip to another website with a click on his mouse?
What if John Doe eventually discovers website B. Website B is simply formatted. The information is right there, in front of him to digest. Website B has links, but links which are actually relevant to subject that John Doe is interested with: dog grooming techniques. How do you think John Doe would feel once he finds such a website?
We’re living in the digital age, and this has spoiled as a bit. We expect things to be delivered with digital speed. We have grown impatient. A matter of minutes seems like hours for us. A few seconds of wait would seem like an eternity.
Effective website design is not about flashy things embedded in your website. It’s about simplicity. It’s about being able to deliver what needs to be delivered, at the soonest possible time.
Effective website design is most definitely not about compiling a series of information together and calling it a website. It’s about order, and system, and efficacy of message conveyance.
Effective website design is about convenience for the visitor to achieve success for the webmaster.
So what do you need to know to design your website as effectively as possible, for marketing purposes? Here are some tips.
* Your choice of colors count. Everything should be light and pleasant for the eyes. Try to make the text color stand out from the background. This basic rule applies: dark-colored texts for light-colored backgrounds, and light-colored texts for dark-colored backgrounds. Try to avoid middle-hued colors, at least with regards to the text-background color scheme.
* Do not include large sized graphics. They will take a while to load. Always assume that your visitors are on dial-up. Converting your graphics in jpeg, gif or png would keep them small. Using bmp format can potentially cause a problem.
* Do not use more than 3 medium-sized graphic files in one page. Your texts would carry your information, not your graphics.
* Make sure that your menu bar is easily seen, and that the same is intuitive. Nothing is more frustrating than figuring out how to go where, and what links lead to what destination. The left margin, right margin, or a line of top of the body, right below the header, would be the perfect location for your navigation menu.
* Focus is key. Make sure that each page is concentrated on one sub-topic of the general subject of your website. Not only will this give your visitors an easier time, it will also serve you well for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.
* Content is king. Your texts should convey accurate and interesting information presented in a well written manner. All the other components of your website may fail, but if your website’s content is strong enough, your website would still enjoy amazing popularity.
Follow the guidelines above and you’ll make things easier for your visitors. In turn, they will reward you with a higher conversion rate, or click through rate, as the case may be.
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