Web Site Design

Would you buy meat from a grocery store that left the bad meat in with the good meat or wasn't clean? Would you buy a car from a sales lot that had totaled automobiles on the front lot? I wouldn't and neither would you. Your website is your grocery store; your car lot. You must have an atmosphere that is pleasing to buyers. One that tells that buyer that you are not an amateur, but instead a trained, seasoned professional. Your site is a direct reflection of your product and that is why that having a well designed website can make or break your sales.

The first thing to keep in mind when designing your website, is "surfability". Take a few minutes a look around at several web pages. What makes them appealing? Were there some that you closed out of immediately? Why? Take notes and do your research. Keep in mind that when a person visits your site they have a goal in mind. They are either seeking information or shopping for a product. Give the person what they want without having to search for it. Be sure that all the information on your site is relevant to your product. Make the buyer think that they need your product to solve their problem.

Your main page serves a very specific purpose. It should be an avenue by which the customer can shop your site. It should be easy to view and load very quickly. This is your first impression and we all know that first impressions can either close the deal or loose the deal. Make it simple. It is best to have links that are easily viewable by the reader that will navigate them to where they want to be. Tables are often a great choice when deciding on a way to design the main page of your site. Your main page should load very quickly, chances are if it takes the page more than ten seconds to load even on a 56k modem, the customer will click away to save time, hoping to find the information or product elsewhere. To increase the loading speed of your main page you should avoid large graphics or excessive graphics. To many banners or special effects can cause a page to load slowly as well.

To make your web site more appealing to the eyes, you should stick to mild colors. If your site is a content site where the user will be doing a lot of reading, it is best to stick to black and white. Color can be added when using tables, as a way to brighten up the page, but remember to keep the overall look of the page professional and appealing to the audience that will be visiting most often. Since screen resolutions vary among monitors, it is a good idea to set the pixels to a standard 800x600. You may also choose to set the tables in your web page to span a percentage of the page rather than a set number of inches. This will be sure to accommodate all screen sizes. You should remember that a lot of Internet users will not use the same browser as you, and therefore you should be sure that your site looks as good on other browsers as it does your own. You can do this by downloading several browsers through which to look at your page.

Be aware of the fact that the overall look of your website is a way to make money. The appearance of the site, if designed properly, can be an excellent marketing strategy for your product or service.

Ok, great. You've decided to enter the world of e-commerce. You have your very own unique product or service that's sure to blow the minds of everyone who uses it. You have an eye-catching website, you've set up ads to generate traffic, but how do you get people to buy your product once they arrive at your site? The answer is simple - great copy.

It's a common complaint among every upstart who follows a marketing guru's every word and are able to generate tons of traffic to their site, but are unable to convert that traffic into sales. The usual reason for such a failure (other than a useless product) is copy that does not entice a visitor to buy.

The difficulty most people have with writing copy that sells is that they are unable to get around the inherent handicaps of selling to a person through the written word. It is hard to establish a rapport with a potential buyer when there is no face-to-face or verbal contact. They think that there's a magic formula or talent needed to write, but remember you aren't trying to be the next Hemmingway, you're just trying to convince someone to buy your product. By understanding 3 keys and with a little practice, anyone can write convincing copy.

1. Identify A Need
Identifying a need in your prospect is one of the most basic principles when it comes to selling. In order for you product to sell, there must be a need that it fills. The beauty of e-commerce is that if someone decided to visit your site, then chances are they already have a need your product can fill. However subconcious it may be, something that you placed in your ad had clicked with them. Now all you have to do is present that need loud and clear so they can understand all the fantastic ways they can benefit from your product.

2. Anticipate and Overcome Objections
If everyone could anticipate and overcome a buyer's objections to making a purchase, then selling would be the easiest thing in the world. Typically price is the main objection to most people. That is until you present your product in a way that changes the price objection into a value.

For example,if someone had a sore throat, then the product of most value to them would be medecine to soothe their throat. If you tried to sell them aspirin for 2 cents, that would have no value because it would not fill their need. But if you charged 10$ for one magic pill that would instantly cure their sore throat, then price becomes no object.

So you must be able to present your product in a way that features its benefits to your prospect. By doing this, you will be able to overcome their objections and move on to the next step which is...

3. Ask for the Sale
It sounds so simple, but you'd be surprised how many times beginning salespeople forget the basic act of closing. If you don't ask someone to buy your product, then chances are they won't. Typically you want to ask for the sale immediately after you feature a benefit to your prospect. So what if you have 10 benefits listed? Then you get to ask for the sale 10 times.

In Conclusion
One final concept that ties everything together is the ABC of selling - "Always Be Closing."

Go ahead and take a minute to search through the internet and find the best sales pages you can. You'll see that the most successful and convincing ones will "Always Be Closing" throughout their presentation. Always give the customer the option to buy right away.

Why bother with a 5 minute presentation when you can close a sale in 5 seconds?

The following rules are what I consider to be the seven cardinal rules of good, functional, solid web design. Whether you are designing an affiliate marketing site or a hobby site, the rules always apply just the same.

1. Get rid of the splash page, all that is, is an extra click people have to go through just to get to the value, which should be immediately available on your homepage. The first thing a visitor sees on the homepage should be the promise of useful information and once again, don't forget value, if they don't think the site is worth their time to stick around for a few minutes.... they wont. Landing pages for targeted traffic are okay, just remember generic splash pages or "enter" pages are annoying and useless to visitors.

2. Eliminate all of the irrelevant advertisements because you should be selling your affiliate products for dollars, not sending people away from your site for cents. Now days most people with experience surfing the net have trained themselves to completely ignore banner ads, so don't rely on them and do not use too many of them, especially animated banners for that matter, cause they are very annoying. Targeted adverts are the only way to go, within reason, don't spam our senses with a billion adverts, its a turn-off.

3. One of the most important cardinal rules of functional, good web design, is if you have to explain how your navigation works... it's a good sign you don't have good navigation. Web site navigation should first above all, function, cause if it does not function it is useless and people will not stay on a web site for more than a few moments if they cant navigate easily. Make your navigation simple and elegant, don't waste peoples time and patience with a bunch of useless Flash animation or disappearing links.

4. Have a clear naming or "branding" of each section of your web site. Don't confuse your visitors. Let them know what section of the site they are in at all times because what is common sense to you, will certainly not be common sense to everyone else. All of us are, after all, individuals and we all think differently about each situation.

5. Audio, please oh please if you absolutely MUST insist on putting audio on your site, at the very least please provide a way to turn it off. There is nothing more annoying than audio on a page that you can't stop. I just leave the website rather than sit through the interruption of some cheesy beat or one of those really annoying talking robot heads. When I am listing to satellite radio I don't want some alien sound destroying my net surfing Zen.

6. Most people in Western culture read from left to right, which means the natural tendency when someone lands on your homepage is to scan from the top left and continue from there. This is also true with navigation, put your most important sections of your site on the left side of your horizontal nav-bar or on the top of your vertical nav-bars. People don't want to see "Home" and "About Us" as the first links, no one cares.... at first. Give them the value, give them the bread and butter of your site... first. After they are satisfied with the meal, they will head on over to the "About" page for the desert, or the icing on the cake to seal the deal. Don't spoil peoples' appetites by putting something in their way that they didn't come to your site looking for in the first place.

7. No one likes an ugly web site, but what people don't like even more than an ugly web site, is a non-functioning web site. My final cardinal rule of good web design is the philosophy that every web site should look as good as it functions. Top shelf functionality will breed top shelf design, it's the nature of good web design.