Good web design and development is more than just coding. You need to consider more than just a visually pleasing page. With very few exceptions, websites are there to make money. Sure, it’s true that you’ve got to have good content and plenty of it in order to raise your search engine rankings. However, once your visitor arrives, it’s imperative that the visitor can quickly and easily discern what you have to offer.
You need to make it easy to navigate your site as well, placing links to other pages on your site which are relevant to that reader’s interest. While it may seem obvious, your web design and development plan must include the assumption that your visitor does not necessarily land on your homepage. You need to organize each page accordingly. Your general page layout and screen size are other factors which contribute to usability. In a nutshell, usability is most important to your success. Here are a few tips that will increase your conversion rates.
The latest figures on screen size indicate that upwards of 80% of users use the 1024 x 768 screen resolution, so it’s best to design your page to that size. A three column page makes a good composition, but in order to be sure your sales propositions are clear to the other 20% of visitors using the smaller screen resolution, it’s best that your sales propositions be placed in the left hand column. For example, if you have an e-newsletter, place this offer in the left hand column.
Remember what we said about not assuming your visitor lands first on your homepage? A good web design and development plan means that you must place your offer for your e-zine in the same position on every page. You’ll increase your readership exponentially, since every visitor will spot your offer.
This brings us to the scrolling factor. Unless you make your purpose and value proposition visible in the top portion of the page, without the user needing to scroll down, chances are good they’ll never see it. All such messages should be displayed in the left hand, or second column, as appropriate.
Your web design and development plan must tackle the complex problem of each page’s organization of content. Knowing that a first time visitor can land on any page on your site, introductory material must be written such that your visitor is not confused. Make the purpose of that material clear, on that page. Do not write it as a continuing saga with the assumption the reader has read the previous page. This isn’t really tricky, as long as you apply the principle of the material being standalone information.
Now for navigation aspects. Let’s say you’ve got a gardening website. One page contains an article on the general care of roses. Your web design and development plan needs to address the question of which of your other pages might be most relevant to that reader, and place links to those other pages in an easily found location. As your traffic grows, you’ll begin to see user patterns to refine your links to suit your traffic.
Incorporate these tips into your initial web design and development plan and watch your traffic grow. Pretty isn’t enough, but fortunately, you can have both beauty and function.
“Good web design and development is more than just coding” true it needs to start with a professional design from a trained designer