Planning your website carefully is crucial in creating a successful business winning tool. Many people forget that your website is normally the first thing that people see and creates a lasting impression, positive or negative!
Here are 5 steps to make sure you are doing the right thing:
1. If you are selling a product on your website, whether it be e-commerce or not, it is important to show the product in its best light. Use a professional photographer and have good images taken and ensure that they are edited to display your products as clear and bold as possible. Try to avoid using images from a standard camera; this can be detrimental to your image. If you can’t get someone to take professional images for you use stock image libraries like iStock or Shutterstock, these are professionally shot, perfectly lit shots. Remember… image is everything!
2. Your site should be easy to navigate. One frustrating thing about visiting a website is not knowing where to go to find what you need, the result of this is usually your potential customers turning to your competitors. Make sure your contact details are easy to find. We would recommend them on every page, some people will just go on your website to find your telephone number, or your email address. If they don’t find them quickly they will soon leave.
3. Make sure that your ‘killer’ content is visible from the home page in easy to navigate to. This also needs to hold all of the information to give the user the decision on whether to contact you or that your offering is not for them. Try not to leave any potential questions unanswered. For carrying a lot of information, a simple ‘read more’ link under the important stuff is all that is necessary, people don’t want to read masses of content to find out one small piece of information. Within this, make the content clear; don’t confuse those that you are trying to attract. Jargon may impress your competitors, but not your customers, and they are the important ones. Remember you are selling your business, not providing free advice. Our marketing company see many companies who forget this, and you need to direct people towards buying from you, not taking your information and using it elsewhere.
4. Calls to action on a website should be appealing and clear, these include buttons, links, images – we call them feature boxes. Try and invoke a reaction from the person looking on your site, you need them to interact with the site for them to become interested. This could be an offer, a useful download or even a tool or a game.
5. Finally, consider the technicalities. Make sure website looks good in all browsers before it is published online. Also ensure that it is up-to-date with current sizes (currently 1280px wide on 8/11/20110) when it is designed. Get your site designed from edge to edge width around 1050px for ideal viewing.
Grapevine are a leading UK marketing company who specialise in providing marketing solutions for companies across a variety of industry sectors. Take a look at our marketing company work.