Building a website has the potential to increase your business exponentially. That is, a well built easy to navigate website. When you are building your website keep in mind that cutting corners and short cuts can lead to a site that is not up to the standard a potential customer would find acceptable. Investing time, effort and resources into producing a well designed site that meets or exceeds expectations and standards will greatly increase your websites chances of success.
Here are some of the top reasons to insist on quality in your design, even when tempting short cuts vie for your business.
Comprehension
You want to design your site to that it is easy for your visitors to understand. Too busy a lay out, not enough space between text or a confusing lay out will cause visitors not to trust your site. Remember when you are working over the internet you don’t have the option of sending in a “friendly face” to fix a situation.
Usability
It has been proven that if visitors don’t find what they are looking for on a site in between 5-30 seconds they are likely to leave the site and continue their search elsewhere. The design of the site directly affects the site’s performance, as well as the visitor’s memory of the site.
Navigation
Your visitors need to be able to get back to your home page easily. Most designers make the company logo a back link to the home page. Another navigation element is the use of breadcrumbs. These act as a sort of “you are here” map, helping visitors to where they are browsing.
The navigational links to a site are typically placed along the far left hand site, as this is the most visible part of the site.
Standards
This refers to both the W3C standards for websites, as well as to what consumers and web users have come to expect as standard. Obviously, your site needs to comply with the accepted W3C standards for web sites; this ensures that your site will be easy to use and work with the various web browsers.
“standards” as far as the consumer is concerned has to do with where they expect to find certain things on a site, such as home page link, navigational buttons, sales process, etc.
Site Maps
This gives visitors the basic navigational information of your site at a glance. Search engines also read your site maps, so this is important for SEO as well.
Images
The graphics of a site are important. You want to have a well designed logo, as well as other images that tell a picture story of what your site does. Your images must also be designed to be quick to load. Images that weigh down a site affect the sites usability.
Consumer Appeal
What you want even more than traffic to your site is to be able to convert your visitors into customers. The overall look, usability and functionality of your site helps determine that. Frequent errors on order forms, lack of contact information and other things that frustrate customers will hinder your site.
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