When you set out to have a website created for your business, it is easy to relegate the task to the lowest bidder. But before you go that route, consider this: Your Website Layout can have a direction effect on your company’s bottom line.
Your website is essentially the “face” of your company to the online world, and because of that it is important that the person you choose to design your site has an understanding of marketing principles that can translate into good website layout.
Not integrating good layout principles into your website will cost you more money than a cheap web designer will save you. To ensure this doesn’t happen to you, be sure you get the following from your web designer:
User Friendly Website Navigation
A website’s navigation, or the way in which a user moves around and through the site to find the information she wants, should be intuitive to a regular Internet user. Even to those who aren’t as accustomed to using the internet, your site should be easy to use, clearly indicate where each type of information can be found, and not require the user to have to “dig” for information. Simple, straightforward navigation will encourage the visitor to continue using the site and to revisit it often.
Offer a search function on your landing page so that users can easily find what they need with minimal effort. And always make sure you design your internal linking structure in a way that will make it easy for visitors to land on your sales page – with as few clicks as possible. After all, the point of great web design is to encourage people to buy what you’re selling!
Make Your Website Layout Consistent
Don’t put all your design eggs in your homepage basket! In other words, don’t concentrate your Website Layout and design efforts on the homepage to the expense of all the other pages. Yes, your homepage should employ first-rate website layout principles, but so should all of your other pages. Each internal page should have the same look and pay as much attention to things like easy navigation as the homepage. By having the same general layout on each page, you’ll help visitors to easily find information and, with any luck, to find their way to your sales page.
One way you can do this is by placing important information front and center. Or, more specifically, place that which you want your visitors to see most at the top of the page. Most visitors won’t take the time to read through paragraph after paragraph of text to find the information they want. They want their information as fast as you can possibly serve it up.
Formatting
Other website layout tricks you can use to help grab visitors’ attention including using bold, italics, bullet points and subheadings to break up text and draw the eye to what you want it to see most. This is called increasing your site’s “scanability factor”. In other words, the rate at which a person can glance at your page and find the information they need. But don’t go crazy with formatting. Too much bold, too many exclamation points, or excessive numbering can cause visual clutter and will be distracting. Keep your website layout clean, simple and to the point.
Remember: Your site’s homepage may not always be a visitor’s landing page, so you want each and every page on your site to be as interesting, enticing, and easy to navigate as all the others.
Implementing some of the above tips into your Website Layout is bound to make coming to your site a better experience for your customers and also help to increase profits.
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The preliminary step is aim to maintain the site simple, understandable and translucent to attract visitors going in to your page and so bringing them closer to buying a product.