Five key tips to build
a website that works

Books have been written about website design, and you can learn much from most of them. But if you want to make sure you get the best results from your website – whether for sales or branding or giving out information – then you should pay particular attention to these five things:

1. Don’t be clever: Depending on whose estimate you believe, most visitors to your website will spend from 5 seconds to 20 seconds – no more – deciding whether your website is giving them what they want. Flash intros and animated elements do more to annoy people than to entice them. If you feel a fancy or clever introduction is part of your branding, then do it, but make it fast, make it relevant, and always give a “SKIP INTRO” option.


2. Get right down to business: What is your website (or your business) about? No, it’s not about making widgets or providing a professional service. It’s about providing a clear benefit to your customers. So find a way to describe your business as a benefit. Then make sure that benefit is one of the first things a visitor sees when they land on your home page. Put the benefit in a headline and, if you can, illustrate the benefit.


3. Offer something on your home page: People love to get things free. So find something free you can give them – a screen saver, a white paper, a useful program or program enhancement. Try to make the offer relevant to your business and its benefits. You can also use your offer as an opportunity to gather your visitors’ names and email addresses.
   
   Don’t discount viral possibilities. If you offer something that is really cool, people will pass it on to friends and colleagues. Then they’ll tell two friends… and so on… and so on. Two huge examples of viral marketing successes are Elf bowling by Nstorm, and Whack-a-Flack by e-tractions. Both games were sent out to a few seed email addresses, and before long, millions were playing. You can find both Elf Bowling and Whack-a-Flack by typing those names into your favourite search engine. (WARNING: really cool offers may distract your visitors).


4. Keep your navigation simple: How many times have you visited a website only to find you don’t know how to get to the part you want? And how many websites have you seen with navigation links on the top, side and bottom of the page? All you need is one clear set of navigation buttons. Current thinking has the left hand side as the best place for those buttons, but you won't lose people if your nav-bar is at the top.
   


5. Pay attention to eye movement: Your eyes do not scan in a left-to-right linear progression down the page. There are starting points and hotspots (see illustrations) which you should keep in mind when designing your pages. Put the important information where it will be seen by even the most casual scan of your page.

Here are some of the results of a
study by the Poynter Institute
of St. Petersburg, FL as reported
in Eyetrack III:

“The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right [Fig. 1].

Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page -- especially when they are in the upper left, and most often (but not always) when in the upper right.

Photographs, contrary to what you might expect … aren't typically the entry point to a homepage. Text rules on the PC screen -- both in order viewed and in overall time spent looking at it.

We observed that with news homepages, readers' instincts are to first look at the flag/logo and top headlines in the upper left. The graphic [Fig. 2] shows the zones of importance we formulated from the Eyetrack data.

While each site is different, you might look at your own website and see what content you have in which zones.

John Friesen has spent 25+ years creating successful direct response marketing in all media, traditional and online. He can definitely show you how to get better results from your marketing dollars. Call him at 604-812-1332.