For example, I’ve been working on some offline promotions and was searching for a simple targeted mailing list. I searched through about twenty sites and not one of those sites were, what I would consider, professional. Their standard blue links were enlarged to about a size 16 font, busy backgrounds, flashing images and very unorganized.

Did I purchase a mailing list from any of those sites? Absolutely not. Why? The way I see it, if those companies don’t take pride in their web sites, chances are, they won’t take pride in their products either. Large linked text and flashing graphics won’t make sales.

Your web site is a direct reflection of you and your business. The appearance of your site is the most important factor in determining your sites value. In other words, if your site doesn’t look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, its perceived value and the value of your products and services will be low.

On the other hand, you may have a great web site, well designed and a quality product or service, but if it takes too long to load, the value will still be perceived as low. Why? Because your potential customer won’t wait. Ultimately costing you business.

Another consideration of great importance is your content. Not just links, but content with value. When someone is surfing the net and they visit your web site, they’re visiting for a reason. Your site has something they want. Whether it is your product, service or information, that’s why they’re there. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll move on to the next site and so on.

If you want your visitors to stay at your site, provide the quality content they’re looking for in a nicely organized fashion. Give them a reason to want to explore your site and to continue to visit your site in the future.

After receiving many questions in regard to web site design, I have devised a list of, what I refer to as, “35 Deadly Web Site Sins.”

• Poor load time
• Poor overall appearance
• Spelling/Grammar
• No contact information
• Poor content
• Poor navigation
• Broken links and graphics
• Poor browser compatibility
• Large slow loading graphics
• Too many graphics
• Pages scrolling to oblivion
• Multiple use of animated graphics
• Animated bullets
• Too many graphic and/or line dividers
• Busy, distracting backgrounds
• Multiple banners and buttons
• Poor use of frames
• Large fonts
• Pop up messages
• Over use of java
• Poor use of tables
• Poor organization
• Different backgrounds on each page
• Over powering music set to autoplay
• Confusing
• Too much advertising
• Large Welcome banners
• Multiple colored text
• Text difficult to read
• No Meta tags
• Multiple use of different fonts
• Under construction signs
• Scrolling text in the status bar
• Large scrolling text across the page
• Poor use of mouse over effects

Take some time to really look at your site. Compare it to sites that you feel look professional. Time your site’s load time — your customers won’t wait. Their time is valuable.

The simple, well designed sites make the sales. If your sales aren’t what you had hoped, take some time to seriously evaluate your site and make some changes before spending your time and money on advertising and marketing. You may be pleasantly surprised.

About the Author

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, Web Design Mastery. http://www.webdesignmastery.com And, Ebook Starter - Give Your Ebooks the look and feel of a REAL book. http://www.ebookstarter.com Visit Web-Source.net to sign up for a complimentary subscription to Etips and receive a copy of the acclaimed ebook, “Killer Internet Marketing Strategies.” http://www.web-source.net

Every website has a life-span; they eventually become dated and no longer fit for purpose - especially if the business has been re-positioned since the site was launched. Sometimes a website needs to be replaced because it’s simply not giving any return on investment.

For many business owners, the hope is that a new website will automatically perform better than the old one, and that the visual re-design in particular will result in more sales. However, thousands of dollars can be spent on a new site and no benefit be seen unless the re-design is approached correctly, and that always begins with asking the right online strategy questions. Latching onto the way the new website looks, before considering what it needs to do, how it achieves that, and how it fits into the company’s industry is a recipe for wasted efforts.

Strategy to inform action

Wanting a site to look modern and up-to-date is natural and does play a part in how customers will react to the new site. However, it is the content that does the hard work, and knowing what content to put in and where is informed by strategic research. These are the questions you should be discussing with your website development team before anyone even begins to mock up a design.

What do you want the site to do?

For e-commerce websites, this question is very easy to answer; sell more! But for businesses who don’t sell directly through their site, this can be more complex. Sometimes it’s getting site visitors to sign up to a newsletter, sometimes it’s to provide information about services and then increase enquiries, sometimes it’s to reinforce brand – often it’s all of these and more. It’s surprising how many companies don’t take the time to consider these goals at the beginning, but being aware of what you want to be the primary and secondary goals of the site informs the structure, prominence given to certain information, calls to action and many other content and design considerations.

What is currently working well?

It’s tempting to throw the old website out entirely, having focused on all the things that aren’t working and may have irritated you over its lifespan. However, taking the time to consider what does work well is important. Have customers ever complained about not finding your contact details for example? Often the answer is yes – but if it’s ‘no’ then you know the way those are presented in the current site is working for your customers, and may be worth carrying over into the new design.

What needs to be improved?

Looking at the kinds of questions people ask after visiting the site (perhaps through a contact form) is a good way to tell whether the current content is presented intuitively. If the answers to those questions are on the site, then it’s clear your customers aren’t finding the information in the way you anticipated. How can a redesign address these problems?

What are your competitors doing?

An analysis of your competitors is always a good way to get ideas for your re-design – not simply emulation, but also looking at what you find hard to do or which information is hard to find. Often business owners are so familiar with their own site that it’s impossible to see it like a new user, however if you go to another site in the same industry, you may be able to get insights about your own. Getting a third party to do this for you is even better, as they will be totally unbiased and be able to evaluate your site alongside your competitor’s sites fairly.

What language does your industry use?

This is a critical component of strategic research, and something that many business owners find difficult to gauge, for the same reason that they find it hard to see their own website as a visitor would. A business owner is often so deeply enmeshed in their own industry, that they find it hard to separate out the terms commonly used by customers from the jargon that could exclude them.

Knowing the language used across the industry informs the content that needs to be used on the site, both to attract and keep site visitors, but also gain search engine visibility. This in particular leads to the first stage of the re-design: structure and content mapping, not the colour palette!

The content is more important than the new visual design

Site structure and the content within it will achieve the majority of goals behind a redesign. Clearly good visual design is incredibly important, as it will help to draw the eye to critical calls to action, make the site easy to use and reinforce brand. However, a beautiful new site will not guarantee improved performance. Before a military campaign, intelligence is gathered and a strategy put in place. Whilst a website redesign obviously is a different experience, the reasoning behind the military approach is still valid to inline strategy. Gather intelligence about your site and your industry, then make the plan before any designs are mocked up or copy is written, otherwise you may end up with a site that looks good, but does nothing to help your business.

About the Author

Jonathan Fink
Jonathan is the founder of Momentum Web Solutions, an SEO and search engine marketing company based in Oxford. Momentum empowers business owners with an in-depth investigation into their website and industry, giving all of the information and training needed to enable ongoing SEO activities to be carried out in house. Find out more about how Momentum’s one-off SEO audit and training can save you money.

Though web design in Colorado Springs and Bloomington, Indiana is what we do, we don’t want to horde all the knowledge. It’s our goal to assist business owners and organization leaders to make the most of their web presence, marketing campaigns and brand image.

This section is our attempt to do just that. Check back often for frequently updated resources, tips and tricks to enhance your media efforts. We’ll be posting articles, guest commentaries, tips, tricks and helpful ideas for you to implement on your web site and graphic campaigns. If you would like to see an article about a specific topic, just contact us.

As always, we love being Colorado Springs’ an Bloomington’s web design company.