Superior Web offers a variety of web site design services to meet your needs.
We can design a few different types of sites for you and your business. We can design a site that looks appealing and drives phone calls. We can also design a merchant site to promote and sell a product or service. We also can design a blog or a forum where you can create an online community surrounding whatever topic or business you would like. Call us today for details!
- Advertising Site
- Informational Business site
- Merchant site
- Blogs
- Forums
It takes time and money to get site visitors to your web site. But just as importantly, good web site design will help KEEP them on your site. In fact, studies show that visitors give you less than 10 seconds before deciding whether to stay on your web site, explore the site, and hopefully buy or perform the most desired action (MDA), like opting in for a free newsletter.
Yet, many advertising site and business web site owners – especially site owners who design their own sites – throw a number of stumbling blocks in the path of the visitor on the way to performing the MDA. What kind of stumbling blocks? Let us describe some for you. If these seem familiar, give Superior Web a call and let us offer you some solutions.
Top 10 web site design errors
Here are 10 mistakes guaranteed to slow the growth of your web business from least critical to most critical. If your advertising site contains any of these road blocks, it may be time to call Superior Web about redesigning your web site. We can also make your web site design work harder with search engine optimization, conversion and ecommerce in general.
10. Flyouts or drop down menus that cover site text
A flyout or drop down sub-menu appears when a visitor clicks on certain navigation links on your web site. Often, these sub-menus cover critical sales text that visitors want to read – your sales pitch.
This web site design flaw is, luckily, one you can fix quickly by creating sub-menus that don’t block critical information – like your toll-free telephone number – by positioning the flyout or drop down submenus to appear against a clear background.
9. Limited payment gateways
A lot of new web site owners only offer a single means of making payment. It might be PayPal or Google Checkout, for example. But many people don’t have PayPal accounts. And PayPal drives visitors off your own web site to the PayPal site. If they decide not to make a purchase at that time, they may never return to your web site.
The more payment gateways you provide, the more orders you’ll receive. Get a merchant account that enables visitors to conduct all of their business on your web site. Offer PayPal, Checkout and other payment gateways as well.
8. Spamglish
Spamglish is text written for search engine “bots.” It contains tons of keywords to better enable these bots to identify what the site is about.
The problem is, writing for bots can make your web site copy harder to read, which can drive web site visitors away. Just as important, keyword stuffing actually doesn’t work. In fact, it’s considered a negative ranking factor with search engines. Keep your keyword density below 5%, meaning that for every 100 words of site text, 5 of those words are keywords.
Write your text for humans, not for bots. Humans buy. Bots don’t.
7. Key site information appears in graphics
Search engine bots can’t read text in graphics (anything with a graphics extension like jpg, gif or other non-text format). So you should avoid placing critical information in a graphic (like a banner image). This is a common error of advertising sites, which tend to be more flashy. If you do use graphics in your web site design, add an <alt> tag that describes the information that appears in the graphic. The alt tag contains a text description of what appears in the graphic, helping SEO bots determine what information appears in all of those eye-grabbing Flash animations and other non-text files.
6. No telephone number
Once you have a prospect on site, is it easy for him or her to reach you? Many buyers have questions and want answers before performing the most desired action.
Providing an email address is good, but some visitors may be ready to pull the trigger and buy right then and there. A telephone number, especially a toll-free telephone number, will boost the number of people who reach out to you and make contact. And once you have them on the phone, you’re more than half-way to closing that sale.
Make it easy for visitors to talk to a human. Try avoid automated phone answering systems. Have a real human being answer the phone. Your prospects will love it and the cost will more than be covered by an increase in sales.
5. Confusing navigation
The navigation bar should be large, clearly labeled and appear consistently in the same place on every page of your web site.
If you offer a number of products or services, consider using a column of links instead of a navigation bar. Again, consistently use the same left or right column throughout the site.
Also, avoid secondary navigation bars on interior pages. These are often overlooked by site visitors who expect all navigation to appear either in a bar or column format.
4. No site map
A link to a site map simplifies the visitors’ search, taking them to the exact information they’re looking for. Adding a site map that’s linked to each page or zone within your web site can help visitors to your web site find what they are looking for, which keeps them engaged with your site-and closer to a sale or desired action.
3. Stale content
Fresh content, like a blog, an RSS feed or green, informational articles (like this one) keep visitors coming back. Green content also makes SEO bots happy, moving your web site up on search engine lists.
Avoid just reprinting duplicate content – the articles available through web sites like EzineArticles.com or hHlium.com. These articles have been downloaded dozens of times and may appear on hundreds of web sites. Search engines slam sites for duplicate content because they don’t provide new information for search engine users.
The bottom line: Keep it fresh to keep your customers coming back.
2. The long-form sales letter
You know those endless sales letters hyping this or that eBook or course of study?
They employ multiple type fonts, bogus testimonials, endless “bonuses,” a PS, a PPS and even a PPPS. These are called Glazier-Kennedy long-form sales letters. This type of sales hype may have worked 10 years ago, but web users have become more savvy of marketing tricks and copywriting sales tactics.
Instead, provide good, solid information with short product descriptions and useful facts about products and services. Focus you site text on meeting visitor needs. Give them information they can use and they’ll be more likely to trust you for a sale.
1. Home page opt-ins
Opt-in modules are used to capture email addresses and site visitors know it. They also worry that, once they give you their email address, you’re going to back sell it to anyone who is interested.
Of all the stumbling blocks you can put in the way of the performance of the MDA, an opt-in box on your home page is the worst. Use opt-ins, but place them deeper in the site so visitors have a chance to explore your products or services first. Once they know the value of what you have to offer, they’ll be more likely to give you their personal information.
The best place to put your opt-in module on your advertising site is on the “Contact Us” page that includes all of your contact information. This gives visitors a taste of the quality you provide and you’re more likely to see more opt in conversions.
Web site design for e-commerce sites:
E-commerce design is in many ways different from regular web site design. An e-commerce web site has to serve two main purposes:
- Cater to the needs of customers
- Sell products
Web users in general are easily distracted and lose patience fast. The key to effective e-commerce web site design is to focus on usability instead of flashy but complicated features. Simple is always more effective than clever.
Once your customers reach your online store, they should already have a good idea of what to look for. The job of your web site design is to make sure they can find it in as little steps as possible, and to clearly convey the features and benefits of the product through words and images.
Your e-commerce web site’s homepage is definitely one of the most important pages on an ecommerce site. It is the most powerful and effective place for announcements and promotions.
E-commerce design for a homepage needs to be clean and simple. Fancy flash animation and other animated graphics will only frustrate visitors. The main content area should contain either one large image, separate sections for images or text or a slideshow to display multiple images. This area is ideal for featured products, top sellers, new arrivals, promotions, discounts or special offers. Vivid images, bold colors, catchphrases and a sense of urgency are all commonly used on the homepage. Use your imagination to make the most out of this area.
The header, sidebar and footer make up the frame of a website and they are primarily used for branding, usability and navigation purposes. This entire area is a critical part of e-commerce design and should be consistent on every page of your site. When online shoppers want to navigate away from a particular page, they will most likely rely on these areas to help them decide where to go.
There are only a few of the many considerations you should keep in mind when developing your web site design. But every site is different, so give us a call to find out how what you need to do to optimize your web site and increase sales!
Superior Web Solutions
518-925-1142