Whilst it’s vitally important to make sure that you get the right people to visit your site in the volumes that are going to help you achieve your overall business goals. It’s equally important what they do when they get there and this will be a result of what they find when they land on your web pages. User experience is fundamental in the success or failure of any website and this starts with the content that you fill those pages up with.

Your menu structure and how visitors to your site navigate is really where you should start, there are some key pieces of information that people expect to see in certain places on your site and this should remain consistent throughout.

It should be instantly obvious what the site is about and one of the easiest ways to do this is through images, either a small top banner or images on the page, you have just a few seconds to convince someone that they have reached the right place and this is much easier to do quickly through images rather than words.

Think about the way you present your words, the way people read online is very different to the way they would read a magazine or leaflet, you need to take into account the fact that most will skim through your words so by keeping the page interesting you are more likely to encourage people to read a little more. Regardless of this, ensure that your key information comes across loud and clear and there are again certain positions on a page where you should be placing all of your most important messages.

Using white space is also important. You do not need to cram in as much as you can, in fact this just ends up messy and confuses the visitor to your site as to what they are suppoed to do. Ensure that your text is easy to read and use spacing to seperate text into bite sized pieces which are much easier for people to digest.

Use images to illustrate your text and ‘wrap’ your text around it to create a professional look and feel. Ensure you have a small white space around the image so that you don’t end up with everything looking all squashed up.

Avoid flash at all costs, search engines can’t read flash, Apple don’t support it and it distracts from what you actually want people to do. You want people to take certain actions on each page, make sure it is easy to do so and do not detract attention away from that with unnecessary movement on the page. rolling images are great when the movement is subtle, but don’t make it impossible for someone to read.

Use video to illustrate your product/service it is a great tool and helps the user better understand what your business can offer them.

And lastly remember that your website is representing your company and should create the right image, but more than that make sure your brand is consistent throughout all of your online and offline marketing.

Having a good looking website is great, we all want that.  But more importantly most of us want a website that will turn visitors into our future customers.  In the same way a retail shop is laid out to encourage people to spend the most amount of money, a website needs to do the same.  We talk a lot about how to increase traffic to your website, but there is no point having lots of traffic which doesn’t actually do the things that you want them to do, whether that is picking up the phone, emailing, buying a product etc..

You need to encourange your visitors to make a positive buying decision and they will only do this if they have a good experience when using your website.  To do this you need to ensure that your website is laid out in a certain way, one which web users are familiar with and one that helps them to navigate around the site and find information easily.  If you make things too difficult for people, they will simply spend their money with someone else.

Things to consider:

• Why are people visiting your website
• Does your website design tell people what you do instantly
• What do you want them to do
• How easy is it to get from one page to another
• Is there enough information about your products and services
• Do you use different media such as images and video
• Where are your call to actions
• Where on the page is the content place

So you see, it’s really not all about having a good looking website design, it’s a lot more complicated than that.  Find out more about website design