Website Design Concerns – The Basics
 by: Mark Gerrard


Just when you thought that you had all the aspects of your website covered, a few more concerns crop up. One of the biggest reasons why customers will leave your website is the time it takes to load or the speed of the website.

Intense graphics, too much flashy special effects and your logo design all eat into your website’s load time. As business owner first and a webmaster second, you need to ask yourself these questions:

* What do I want my website to accomplish?
* My website in its current state, does it accomplish what I want?
* Can I limit the amount of graphics used and still broadcast my message?
* How I maintain the viewer friendly design of my website?

1) What Do I Want My Website To Accomplish?

When answering this question go beyond the obvious answer of ‘I want to make money.’ More importantly, ‘How can I give the customers what they want while still achieving my business goals?’

Remember these 4 key points: what are my customers’ problems; what solutions have they sought (or ones that didn’t work); what I will offer to provide this solution and finally; why they should buy from me. When you have successfully answered these questions, get an objective opinion. Why? What you may think are reasons may not be what others see (i.e. your customers).

2) My Website In Its Current State, Does It Accomplish What I Want?

If you are creating a new website, you have the advantage of starting with a clean slate and progressing towards your goal. If you are an existing website owner, you may need to re-evaluate if your website is accomplishing what you originally set as its goals.

The ultimate review is this: Am I attracting enough customers to my website and are they buying my service or product? If you are attracting customers, yet they aren’t buying, you need to review your prices and checkout process. If they proceed to checkout and then balk (click away) again you need to determine why. If the reverse is occurring and you have frequent customers and they are buying, it may be time to see if you can add more products they may be interested in – (either through a newsletter or alerting them on the website). This will allow you to ‘up-sell’ to your customer and provide them will more solutions to their problems.

3) Can I Limit The Amount Of Graphics Used And Still Broadcast My Message?

Limiting the amount of graphics used will help your website load faster and will help deliver your message to the customer quicker. However, just because your website may have a lot of graphics doesn’t mean that it has to load fewer graphics; it may mean that the size of the file may have to be reduced in order to have the products listed show properly. For example, if you are showing ladders on your website, you may group them according to height and to no more than 3 per page.

4) How Can I Maintain The Viewer Friendly Design Of My Website?

When mapping your website allow for the fact that you will expand your website to include more information, products or services. Do not build your website with a limited capacity. You will automatically restrict yourself from expanding and possibly create more headaches down the road when you expand.

Some points to remember:

* Have clear titles
* Include a site map
* Include an ‘About Us’, ‘Contact’ and ‘Privacy’ page where people can see a real address and phone number

When you create your website, keep these questions in mind. Get some objective feedback from someone who gives you their true opinion and doesn’t say things to make you feel good. The reason: your customers don’t know you and will at any opportunity click away from your website if given the chance. You minimise the direct chance of clicking away and maximise the opportunity to provide the customer with what they want and you fulfill your business goals


About The Author
Mark Gerrard is the Development Manager of the Freestart Website Builder Platform. See our website builder in action at http://www.freestart.com