There are many mistakes to be made, here are my top 5 of things you should do if you want to have a good and successful website for your business
- Don’t be like everyone else – you want to be unique, stand out from your competitors. Yes, there are concepts you should follow, colors you should avoid, formats that work better, but don’t make your site look like everyone else’s. If I can’t remember your site tomorrow, I might not come back to it.
- Align your design – if you have a physical business with flyers, business cards, logos, or any other physical presence- follow it. Don’t make your website totally different than your existing business if you want people to make the connection.
- Think of your customer base – if you want to sell your products to certain social groups, learn them and use that information in your benefit. If they are heavy mobile users – create a mobile version of your site. If they are heavy social network users – create links to those type of sites or even create your own pages within them.
- Stay up-to-date – Use technology to help you keep your inventories correct so you won’t make a customer think they ordered something just to find out later it was out of stock already. Also stay up to date with website technologies, for example don’t use out of date HTML tags. Although most browsers will still render your site correctly, it may slow performance.
- Stay organized – people have a short attention span online, they want to be able to find what they are looking for quickly or they will move on to another resource. Organize your site so everything is easily accessible and organized in a logical manner that is easy to follow. Good navigation is a key.
Efrat –
ReplyDeleteYou made a lot of good points. I would also add that you should track how many people visit your website to see if your site is effective. In addition, there is a difference between having an online presence and actually it doing something for your business. HTML is a quick, cheap and easy solution but if you want to have any e-commerce transactions on your site, it is still not very cheap or easy. What you want to put into your website depends on what you want to get out, so having some kind of a marketing/online plan is a good idea.
Thanks Elena, that is a great addition. Maybe if others comment I can make this a top 10 :)
ReplyDeleteI would say usability is one important thing to consider when creating a site. Too often sites use heavy flash, tricky navigation, or internal speak on their site. A focus on marketing is good, but if the usability of the site and how the user interacts easily with it isn't taken in to account, the end result can be terrible.
ReplyDeleteHi Lindsey, I think I touch on that point in item #5, if the site is not easy to use people would give up and look for a product somewhere else.
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