Archive for the ‘Design and Content’ Category

What to do When Your Website is Causing Your Online Business to Fail

July 21st, 2009 | No Comments »
Posted by admin under Design and Content

It is very common for a company site to be so poor that no one purchases the products or can even find it on the search engines to even click on the website.  Businesses fail on the web every day and there are things that you can do to make sure that you are not one of them.  In most cases, companies that failed on the net had a problem that caused them to fail.  It could have even been so simple to fix or repair too.  Here are a few things that you might look at if you think your site may be the reason that you are not doing too well.

The content on your website may be a factor if you are not getting any hits on your site or customers coming to see you.  If you sell vintage clothing then you need to have plenty of content for every product.  You may have women looking for vintage dresses or a specific item.  If you only have photos and no words then your site may not be showing in the search engines.  Content is very important.  This includes item descriptions for men’s vintage clothing and every category of attire that you offer. You should provide product descriptions, short paragraphs about the business and your mission, and even information about the company.  There is a balance with content and it needs to be useful to the customer but also to you so it works with the search engines to help you be successful.

Content can also cause a business to fail if you have too much.  Too much content looks overwhelming to a visitor. Most people don’t surf the web to read a book and most sites that have too much content or look too wordy usually lose the customers as soon as they click on the web page.  Not enough content is annoying to a customer and can even be confusing to them what your company is all about.  Content that is inaccurate or even grammatically incorrect can be annoying and cause you to lose credibility.  Misspellings annoy customers also.  Content needs to be professionally written.

A website can cause a company to fail if it is not constructed properly.  A site needs to be easy to navigate through the pages.  There shouldn’t be any broken links and there shouldn’t be any confusion.  When you click through your company site it may make perfect sense to you because you know where everything is.  However, a user may have a really hard time making it through the site and get lost easily.  A confusing site will lose customers and they will not return.  Broken links are frustrating and they will cause you to lose customers also.  Keep in mind that most potential customers who go to a broken site do not return later to find out if the owner fixed it.  They move on because there are millions of other sites on the web to pick and choose from.

Article source: http://www.catalogonweb.com/blog/
what-to-do-when-your-website-is-causing-your-online-business-to-fail/

Is Your Web Design Hurting Your Content?

March 28th, 2008 | No Comments »
Posted by admin under Design and Content

Most web design company professionals agree that content is king. This simply means that most readers of web pages go online looking not for cutesy images or even interesting animations, but rather content, such as articles, tips, information, and videos. Your readers are not so much interested in seeing your web design prowess as they are getting information that is useful or entertaining to them. Unfortunately, many businesses are so hung up on getting interesting web design, that they end up hurting their content. Is this affecting you? Just ask yourself the following questions:

1) Does your web design make it hard for viewers to find what they want? If your audience is constantly confused about where they are on your web page and where they can go, your Web navigation is not very good. Your Web navigation should make it easy for your audience to find exactly the information they’re looking for. If you’re not sure how your Web audience is able to navigate your web site, just ask. Set up a poll that determines whether or not your audience is satisfied with your web site. Then, simply listen to the answers. If you don’t have the time to go through the information yourself, your web design firm can generally set up market research that determines the effectiveness of your web site. This can be invaluable in helping you build a better web site.

2) Does you web site make it hard to see your content? Lack of color contrast and a busy background can lead to eye strain and can make your text almost unreadable. A simple background color and a contrasting text color is a good bet. 12 point font or slightly larger — but not too large — is also a good design choice. Choose basic background colors, and when it comes to articles or longer pieces of text, always placed them on a white background. This simply makes them easier to read. Avoid busy backgrounds with lots of little titles or images altogether. They may look cool in theory, but they make reading your material very hard.

3) Is your content readable on different computers? Your web site may look great on the company computer or on a new personal computer, but not everyone has a high-grade machine. Students may be viewing your web site from ancient laptops, and some of your customers need using old machines in an Internet café. Make sure that you test out your web site on different computers to make sure that different operating systems, different Internet browsers, different monitors, different systems all still feature your web site in its best light.

4) Is your content formatted simply? If you’re using lots of formatting tricks — such as tables, frames, or lots of fonts, you are hurting your content by making it hard to read. If you’re in doubt about how to make your web site more readable, make it simpler. Many companies are scared to go simpler on their web site, because they want to convince their clients that they know how to use all the latest web design elements. Many companies simply confuse a high tech web site with a very busy web site. In reality, when you look at the highest ranking web sites, such as Google or Yahoo, notice that they use very simple web design elements — in fact elements that could have been used 10 years ago.