All posts tagged web site design
Keep It Simple Silly
Let’s face it, web Analytics can be a little hot to handle even for the most experienced among us. It is full of tools, techniques, Web 2.0 and all sorts of other tidbits of information. Yet, it can be complex, intricate and at times intractable. Worst of all, it can inundate us with too much data and choices. Scared? The trick is to ‘KISS’ and make up with all that it has to offer. That is, Keep It Simple, Silly. Whether you are the most experienced user or know next to nothing about Analytics, we can all use a few simple tips to help us KISS better in order to maximize our efforts.
Know the Basics
This may seem obvious to some, but to others, especially those viewing analytics for the first time, the jargon may be a bit foreign. If you focus on these basic but important areas then you will be off to a good start in understanding most of what is reported.
- Arrival method: How are people finding you? Analytics breaks traffic down into three areas – Direct Traffic, Search engines (Paid and Non Paid) and Referring sites (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Understand why traffic is being driven or not being driven via one of these areas.
- Bounce rate: This is the percentage of visitors who went to one page only and left your site. The higher this number, the more questions you should be asking about your site’s performance.
- Content: What pages do people spend the most time on? Are your product/services pages attracting any visits? What about your blog?
- Keywords: What keywords are people finding your site with? Are the keywords relevant and converting?
- Location: Where is the traffic coming from? If you are local and receiving national attention then you might review your geo-targeting.
Create the Dashboard
Dashboards help you visualize and track trends on every level of your business and to align activities with key goals while keeping you on top of vital statistics and key performance indicators (KPIs). In simpler terms, it is there to communicate the performance of one or more metric (starting with the metrics mentioned above). With colored bars and nice graphs trending over time, dashboards can be easy to look at and help you gauge your website’s overall performance.
Set up Reporting
We’re all very busy just trying to keep our heads above water. But if we’ve taken the time to understand a few metrics and have gone as far as setting up a dashboard then we might as well take that final plunge and set up automated reports. Its the old saying in business, you cannot manage what you cannot measure. Therefore, automated reports delivered to your email inbox weekly or monthly will establish a good habit of viewing your Analytics data.
Start KISSing Your Website
Once you become a KISSing expert in Analytics turn your attention to the website itself. Remember most of your site’s visitors have very little patience and can be easily distracted by all the jazz in your website that leads to nowhere. Functionality, relevance and immediacy are key touch points of a site. When it comes to web design, layout and content, your site has to KISS and tell! Use professional looking fonts and standard font sizes that are easy on the eye and make sure your site navigation easy to use and easy to find! Killer looks, per se, may kill your site so Keep It Simple!
Think Like a End User, Not a Site Owner
As a site owner, you may have created the worlds best website, you may believe it is the elephant in the room, which no one can ignore. Cheers, but are there any suitors for your elephant? Is it drawing in the traffic? Is it paying you dividends? If silence is your answer, then let the truth be told. Successful, prosperous websites are gauged by traffic (to a degree) and meeting website goals and not by buzz. And to reach the pinnacle of successful online is to think like an end user, not a site owner. Below are some ideas to help you with your transition from site owner to end-user.
Is Your Message Mixed?
Make the sites goal loud and clear. If you are selling French perfumes online, push it to the forefront of the site, rather than splash images that do not call for measurable and tangible action.
Blend Your Design With Content
Too much design, too little content, is like gloss that ends up as gross. The content has to be populated the right way, across the shell, homepages, section pages and interior pages. Dont be mesmerized by design, but dont give it a cold shoulder either. Form should follow functionality, and not the other way round.
Ease of Navigation
How does your navigation link work? Is it easy to use or a potential trap for visitors? A visitor should not feel challenged. He should be able to go where he/she wants on your site, quickly and easily, period. Using a search box on the site is the way to go, to get your visitors to their product/service directly.
Do Not Ignore The Shopping Cart
There are a million shopping carts out on the web, so you should know how to pick and choose the right one with the right fit for your site. Default shopping carts are best avoided; always go for a branded shopping cart, to lend credibility and confidence to your purchaser. You cannot be too careful when it involves your customers money!
How to Remain in Style Always
On the web, todays trends are pass tomorrow. Its the perils of e-commerce evolution. So how do you retool your sites design that might look archaic sooner than you think? Redesign your site? But its like a journey without end. The trick is to realign, not redesign. Think up ways to realign your sites features with changing trends on the go.
Be Consistent
Everyone loves to experiment, but dont throw consistency out the window! In the hands of a professional web designer, your site will wear a consistent look standard formatting of fonts, links, colors, etc. This is lost when you do the edits or touch up the site yourself, banking on your rudimentary knowledge of simple HTML by adding new content pages. A small change leads to inconsistent formatting which might put off a visitor.
You Have Got Mail
You may have experienced this before: Impressed by the touch and feel of a great looking site, you look to see up the owners phone number and you get lost, making you wonder for a moment, that the customer (the site owner) may be in hiding! Dont make the simple mistake of sending your prospects hunting for your contact. Put your phone number/contact details in a prominent position.
Cash in on Merchandising Opportunities
Never miss up on an opportunity to make that extra dollar. Merchandising opportunities abound for your website, such as cross-sell, multiple add-to-cart, and other direct call-to-actions.
Practicing the above, especially as you foresee future growth and create a larger bouquet of offerings, will get you on your way to becoming the successful, prosperous site you once thought you had.
Web Site Success Comes With Goals, Not Design
It’s amazing there are still business owners who just don’t understand the fundamentals of owning a web site. With all the buzz about technology and social media, the primary focus always appears to be on web design. True, web design is important. Especially when it comes to branding. But good web site design and layout is not rocket science given the plethora of open source solutions and software available on the Internet.
Truth be told, the success of any web site will depend on more than just design. Besides, just having a web site isn’t good enough anymore. If a business is spending money on a web site, shouldn’t there be some talk about a return on investment? With no cookie cutter approach to count on, we can take a look at some guidelines for establishing goals to measure that return.
Before you even start the design and development of your web site, ask what you want to accomplish with your web site and what type of desired result you seek not only for you but also for your visitors.
- Describe what you want to accomplish with as much clarity and detail as possible. If your goal is to provide information to the public or generate product brand awareness, don’t just state that. Write down exactly how you are going to provide information or generate product awareness. You should also state exactly how and when you will evaluate your progress.
- Break your web site goal(s) into smaller, obtainable minor goals. For example, if you sell multiple products organized in multiple categories, then establish a goal for each category or each product web page. This will help identify areas of strengths and weaknesses on your way to evaluating your overall web site goal.
- Establish goals you know you are actually capable of obtaining. If the goal is to generate new leads but you get very little site traffic, then set your sites low. Be realistic. It’s better to reach your goal regardless of how small than to not reach it at all. That will allow you to better determine what works or doesn’t work.
- Set goals by time and/or importance into specified target dates. For example, if you are trying to sell products for the holiday season or communicating the latest product or service information to customers, then make sure you note your start and completion dates.
- If your goal is to obtain new web site visitors and customers, then your site should be centered around the relevant keywords that new customers would use to search for your site.
Whether it’s increasing traffic, converting customers or just simply sharing information, having clear, established goals and objectives will prevent you from performing unnecessary analysis. It will also help you better understand your web site’s successes and failures and allow you fix and improve your web site. Otherwise, you will never be satisfied with the results regardless of the design.
Effective SEO techniques for your website
Lets get real. Getting great search engine rankings is not rocket science. Also, easy and effective SEO doesnt cost the White House. The thumb rule: Create a real site for real people. And let inbound links come naturally, to your website. Caution: Dont pay for links, its ugly and controversial too.
So how do you gain inbound links? First off, dont be content with a website, but include a blog with tons of content, to attract more traffic. A good blog will grow content fast and always pay off in the long run.
Sometimes, you do all the things right but still dont get the ranking right for your website. Heres a big tip to boost your search engine rankings: Provide the search engines with sitemaps to your website. The sitemap essentially speeds up the search engines like Google and Yahoo to spider, index and rank your web pages, so that what used to take months now happens real quick. The search engines will find your site, search it, index it in their database, and most importantly, show your site high up in the search results. As you grow your blog, your new posts will be easily spidered, indexed and ranked because of your sitemap submissions. Now, you are on way to becoming an SEO specialist and keep your White House
Tips to Owning a Successful Web Site
There are some things that dont need an expert. Like creating your own web site, making a success of it, adding to its popularity and to your bottom line. Here are four lessons to be learned in achieving your web site goals.
1. Dont let your programmer design your web site! You know best what you want your web site to do, be, say, show and find. Or do you? Thats the homework for you, before you dream of having your own dot com.
Hint for your homework:
The Internets thumb rule: Keep it simple.
2. Learn, re-learn and learn a little more about the latest web tools, editors, blogs, platforms, payment windows, shopping carts, search engines, keywords, search engine optimization, and stuff. Learn what they do and not necessarily how they work.
3. Whats your product or service? Find out that first. It need not be tangible even. Also, your web site can be a touch point for other products, services, etc. available in other web sites.
4. Know your customer! Why should people visit your web site? For what? When, or whenever? How are you going to woo them 24/7/365? Why would they come to you again and again? Not an easy exercise, but dont go looking for shortcuts that dont exist anyway!
