Web design: Pitfalls and Solutions

The first thing you need to decide when you get a website designed is: What are you trying to achieve? Of course, you want more customers, and it is important to get them feeling comfortable about you and your business.

To do this, you need to engage their feelings and intellect. People respond to colours and images that are suitable for what the site is doing. You require a different colour scheme and movement according to the audience. For example, different things appeal to teenagers, businessmen, or to retired people for example. Make sure your designer understands these things.

Explain to the designer what your market is:

For example, business to business websites generally have rather sober design, concentrating on text that seeks to impress the visitor with the quality and soundness of the firm. Consumer products will do better with more colour, and some animation. In all cases, you need to put in all your products or services.

Gone are the days when you could get a template website of home page, products/services and contact us, provided by some of the local directory services, and expect to get a ranking. Now, you need to describe what your products/services are, have pages on each one, and some more material to get rankings.

Make Your Website Attractive to Your Customers

To attract the intellect you need good text, in the form of a soft-sell sales letter, where the aim is to convince the reader that you are reliable, dependable and have the products or services they require. The images will tend to set the scene. Pages about the products or services will give information why the viewer should buy from your site. As mentioned in Essential Pages you need to have some articles about your business sector, or how to choose products, etc.

In other articles, we show what pages you need in a site, what sort of name you want, and the codes that can be used. Don't think of some of these as just something you must have, but use them to make yourself appear as good as you are.

Tell Them About Yourself

For example, 'About Us' should not only give details of how long you have been in business, where you operate, but also who runs the business, and how long he or she has been doing so. Add anything that can improve your reputation. A 'Testimonials' page can also be useful, but it is important that you keep the letters on file.

Also important is a good navigation structure, so people can find their way around the site easily. Generally there should be no more than three tiers:

What about Video and Audio?

Video can be very useful in promoting your business and in showing what you offer. Websites with video have been shown to be more likely to get ranked than those that do not have video, but this needs to be done in a particular way, and not in a long-winded face-to-face interview. Two minutes is about the maximum attention span for video, even from businessmen! Contact us to find out how this is done and how we can help.

You can also put audio on the site if that is appropriate, but keep it short. The length should be two to four minutes at the most.

If you are selling on the site, then you need to ensure that it is a secure site, and that you display all your products, usually drawn dynamically from a database.

If your site is intended to encourage people to contact you, make sure it is easy for them to do it. Have a contact page with a contact form on it, and do your best to answer all enquires quickly. Also, provide links to the contact page on other pages.

For website design contact us