Turning Website Browsers Into Buyers With Good Design

Essentially, your website is your entire business, all rolled into one central location that can be visited by anyone around the world, 24 hours per day. With that said, consider that how your site is designed can have a huge impact on a consumer's decision to purchase goods and services from you versus your competition.One of the biggest mistakes businesses make in their site design is clutter. While, from an economic point of view, getting as much information on your page may seem like a good thing, often times this strategy backfires. Internet technology has grown from simple text pages to today's ever growing litany of animations, interactive games, video streaming, and more. As a result, many sites employ these technologies on their pages as a means to attract visitors. But, because they are often employing all of these technologies at once, pages load slower, potential customers can become overwhelmed, and they may choose to simply find one of your competitiors.Modern web design has got to be customer focused. Instead of trying to throw every product and every bit of information about your company on your landing page, consider focusing only on a core product or product line. This can change as often as you would like by employing advanced programming and database technology, but making your landing page product focused is the key. As Google has begun to reach far beyond mere search results, branching out into shopping, many people are using Google as a means to find products and services rather than going to individual web pages and trying to navigate. Having your landing page focus on a core product or product line can greatly enhance the way your pages are indexed, hence, shoppers using Google will have a better chance of finding your business.One website design component to focus on is your site's navigation bar. If you try to cram as much information and as many links into your navigation bar, you run the risk of frustrating the customer. Remember, your goal is to make the customer's experience as hassle free as possible. Using Flash technology to create animated navigation bars may seem like a neat way to show off and display extra links in drop down panels, but many times, these methods only lead to the customer clicking away as the drop boxes disappear and reappear. This does not make for a good customer experience, and could cause a customer to seek business elsewhere.Furthermore, you are wanting to reduce the number of clicks a site visitor needs to make in order to get to what they are looking for. Keeping your site's design clean and minimal is going to be the safest bet, including only essential links to products and information. Useless ads and columns only create more clutter and only serve to squeeze your design into a tighter space. The goal is a slick, sleek, modern look that is focused on your core product or service and is user friendly. Having your products, and the ability to purchase them, right on your landing page is a great way to get visitors' attention focused squarely on the reason for visiting the site; to buy your merchandise.