Good Website Design Starts With The Purpose of the Website

I’m constantly amazed by websites that I stumble across that seem to be missing the fundamental points that can make them a howling success. I think it is much easier to think with what should or should not be included in a website if you can break down the types of websites into finite categories. In other words, it’s not just “any old website”, but a specific type of website that is designed to accomplish a very specific task aka it’s purpose.

Once the purpose of a website is determined, then design becomes easy. The purpose of the website will be the determining factor when it comes to which pages the website will need, any special features it should have, etc. It is the determining factor in all elements of the design, at least it should be, anyway.

There are 5 types of websites.
Of course there are more, but there are 5 main categories that a website will fall into, always. So, before embarking on anything as adventurous as building a new website, it should be determined which type of website it is. They are outlined below:

1. Sales Website or E-commerce Website.
   The purpose of a Sales Website is to sell whatever the website has to sell. It can be a one-page, never ending sales pitch on a single product, or it can be a full-blown E-commerce website with a number of items for sale. Regardless, it is a website that has the sole intention of selling.

2. Lead Generating Website.
   The purpose of a Lead Generating Website is to generate leads, to capture identities, to get people to somehow contact the company whether by phone or via the Internet. There are many ways to capture identities or generate leads (ie: Click Here for FREE Demo, Sign up for our FREE Newsletter, Call Now and Get X for FREE, Click Here for a FREE Report on How to Make Money on the Web, etc.) The point is, it’s the websites job to generate a lead or a reach.

3. PR Website.
   A PR Website is purely corporate image or corporate branding stuff. It’s what the name implies, P.R. – Public Relations. It is the art of creating a website that makes people feel warm and fuzzy about whatever or whomever the website is about. It is all about making that company or person look good to whoever they are supposed to look good for. Some examples would be individual executive profile websites, author websites, publicly traded investor relations websites, artist websites, musician websites, public speaker websites, etc. You get the idea.

4. Services Industry Website.
   The services industry is probably the largest sector we service. This includes salons, spas, dentists, doctors, restaurants, lawyers, ice cream shops, chiropractors, pet groomers, and more. Basically any business that provides a service or services that someone would physically go to or need to contact face-to-face. The purpose of the Services Industry Website is simple, but two-fold; provide enough information that a prospective customer would want to contact them for their services and provide all the necessary information so that a customer can contact them.

5. Educational, Informational or Entertainment Website.
   Whether it’s an Educational, Informational or Entertainment Website, they all serve the same purpose, which is to capture people’s interest or attention with their content. Some perfect examples are blogs, news/media websites, recipe websites, MySpace, Facebook, NeoPets, About.com, etc. Each of these websites has one thing in common; they were designed with the intention of capturing peoples attention and then providing enough interesting information (content) or activities that people want to stick around.

Every website on the Internet falls into one of these 5 categories, period. Many websites will be a bit of some of these, but in any case, there will always be one primary, over-riding purpose of the website.

For example, a website may be designed to SELL a product as its primary function, but, in the event that the person is not ready to buy when they happen to stumble across the website, they will hopefully be converted to a lead that can be promoted to over time and eventually turned into a sale.

The opposite can also be true. Where you have a more expensive or complex item for sale, such as a software application program, it may be primarily a Lead Generating Website and secondarily a Sales Website. In such a case, the website would promote a FREE Demo or Download Trial Version to get a lead, then they would promote to that lead to get them to eventually commit to the product and buy it.

Another example would be a Salon website. The primary purpose may be to let the world know that they are there, what they have to offer, and how to find them – but the secondary purpose would be to create good PR for the salon so that people want to come in.

The examples and combinations are endless, but the point is that if you can think with the purpose of a website, then you can ensure that the design, content and structure are all directed to accomplish that purpose. It’s a different way of looking at website design, but it can make the difference between a mediocre website and a website that ROCKS.

©2008 Siouxie Boshoff. All Rights Reserved.

Turning Website Visitors Into Customers

Analyze, Strategize and Increase Website Traffic

Lots of web site visitors, but no sales. Some visitors and some sales. No web site visitors and no sales. These are the common dillemas faced by most web site owners. But what does all this mean?

First things first. If all you know is that the website is “not working”, but you don’t know why, that’s okay, because there are software programs available that can tell you exactly what you need to know. I’m talking about what It is commonly referred to as web site visitor tracking software or web site statistical tracking or website analytics. In either case, it is brilliant and neccessary if you want a web site that rocks.

In determining how effective a website really is, website stat traffic software can give you a clear picture of what’s actually happening. You can find out how many visitors, how often they come, where they are coming from, how they got there and where they are going when they get there. This is an extremely vital tool for webmasters or website owners. In fact, if you are reading this now so that you can apply this in some aspect to your website and you don’t have any sort of statistical tracking, then that is the first thing to remedy. Get stat tracking on your web site immediately, then let it roll for a few weeks and come back to this then. Otherwise, what I have to say here, will be of little use.

What Really Counts is the Bottom Line
When I create and maintain a website, I’m really only interested in two things:

1. That the website increases the image and impression of a client’s business.
2. That the website does what it is supposed to do – which in most cases is to generate leads or sales, period.

The first should be a given for any professional web designer and anything other than the above is really not worth mentioning. In fact a website can win awards for being “beautiful”, but if it is not generating leads or sales – then honestly, who cares? At the end of the day it is the bottom line that matters, and that equates to more business from that web site. So, how can you determine a website’s effectiveness?

How to Assess a Website’s Effectiveness
There are really only 3 situations you may encounter in assessing how effective a website really is. Once you know which situation applies to that website, then you can work out a strategy to increase that website’s actual effectiveness.

Analyzing stat tracking results, you can usually determine which situation applies to a website. It will almost always be one of the following:

1) Few site visitors, and a high conversion rate.*
Let’s say a website gets 50 visits a month (which is pretty low), but 10 of those visitors become leads or customers. One might be disappointed, but they would missing the bigger picture because 10 out of 50 visits (which is really 1 out of 5) would be an awesome conversion rate and the solution is simply to drive more targeted visitors to that web site.

But how?
Well, we already know that 10 out of 50 will buy – so the website is designed well, it just needs more visitors. It may be getting so few visitors because of lack of visibility in the search engines (in other words no one really know that it’s there!) so they need to invest in some search engine optimization** (SEO) so that they can be found in the search engines for their products or services. They could do a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Campaign in the meantime so they can generate immediate traffic while they work to rank in the search engines naturally (without paying). It doesn’t have to be an expensive campaign, but it can be enough to really drive more than sufficient traffic in. After all, we already know that they need 5 visitors to generate a lead or sale, so the more targeted visitors we get, the more sales and leads.

2) Lots of web site visitors, but little to no conversion.
Let’s take a web site that gets 1000 visits in a week and a couple leads or sales a week. This would be a VERY poor conversion rate and is definitely a warning sign that something is off.

It probably means one of two things; Either the website is designed ineffectively and does not drive people to become leads or sales, OR that site is ranking for search terms that bring in alot of unqualified traffic. In many cases it will be the former, and in some cases it will be the latter. You can get some idea by using stat tracking to see where all the traffic is coming from. If most of the traffic is coming from the search engines, you should be able to actually see which search terms people used to find the site. If the search terms are too broad – then the site will get less targeted traffic. If the search terms are fairly precise, and they are getting a lot of traffic – then an overhaul of some kind is definitely in order because something about that website is COSTING them leads and sales.

If they are getting most of their traffic from “blind referrals”, it usually means that people are actually typing the web address directly into their browser – in which case it means that the web site is being promoted in some way, shape or form, but that the visitors are not being converted to a sale or lead. The site could be unprofessional, could be confusing, difficult to navigate or possibly just missing a call to action (meaning there may be no incentive for someone to become a lead or sale, or no obvious way for them to become a lead or sale). Regardless of the circumstances, the site would need to be overhauled in some manner to make it more effective.

3) Little to no site visitors and little to no leads or sales.
A simple example of this would be 10-20 visitors in a week or more and no leads or sales at all. This is a fairly simple troubleshoot. The site is probably not ranking in the search engines for any terms that people are actually searching for, and chances are pretty high that the client is not promoting their website at all. In either case, something needs to be done immediately. It is important to understand that a website is not an instant solution to creating a cash cow. Of course it can generate lots of cash, but it has to be promoted and proactively marketed to create that cash flow. The first priority would be to drive tons of qualified traffic to the website.

This can be remedied rather quickly by implementing the same actions as covered in #1 above, along with some direct marketing (postcards, print ads, etc). Regardless of how this is accomplished, it has to be done because without sufficient traffic to the web site, there is no way to gauge how effective the website is.

As a side note, in my experience, clients that invest in marketing their web site actively through internet ad campaigns (like Google AdSense and other similar) as well as through traditional means, will on the average get the most traffic to their web site. Those that don’t do anything to promote their web site generally will end up with a web site that is virtually invisible. That just seems to be how it goes.

The above guidelines should help you immensely in determining the most effective course of action to create a successful website. I hope that it will help you get the traffic AND the conversion you dream of.

*Conversion rate: When used in websites statistics, it simply means the number of site visitors who are converted to a lead or sale.**Investing in search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to most web sites, however, in this case I am referring to either investment of money by paying a professional, reputable SEO expert to do the work for you or investment of your time (which includes learning about SEO and then implementing it – both of which can be time consuming, but are worth it).©2005 Siouxie Boshoff and Visual Edge Design, Inc.

Creating a Website That Sells – Part Two

7 Elements That Add Up to a Website That Sells!

You want to sell stuff from your website. So what are the key elements that add up to a website THAT sells?

Here are 7 elements that are a MUST for a web site that sells:

1. MAKE IT REALLY OBVIOUS WHAT IS BEING SOLD.
It should be obvious for any visitor to see exactly what is for sale. If there are a number of products, then the site should be laid out so that one can easily see all of the products at a glance. In a larger e-commerce site, then these can be broken down into categories with sub-products in each category so that the visitor can “drill down” to the single product they are looking for.

For example, let’s take a website that sells books, DVDs and CDs. It might have a navigation structure that looks like this:

Books > DVDs > CDs
and after one clicks on DVDs:
DVDs > Action > Children’s > Comedy > Drama > Family >

You get the idea. It’s EASY to see what’s for sale and it’s EASY to find what you’re looking for. And of course, there should be a product search box that is EASY to locate and use.

If the website sells a single product, it should be obvious from the home page and it should be easy to order. If a button says “Tee Shirts” then the link should go to a page about Tee Shirts, NOT “Women’s Apparel” or some other stupid phrase OTHER than what it said the first time. There are even huge company websites that are notoriously difficult to navigate because when you click on a category or section, it does not take you where you think you are going. This creates frustration and sends the visitors running to the competition.

2. HOW TO ORDER.
It should be easy and obvious for a visitor to order something from a website. An ORDER NOW button should be right beside the product being offered and should go straight to that product in a shopping cart. The shopping cart should have easily identifiable buttons like “Add to Cart”.

The point is that it should be obvious and easy to order. There should be as little additional pages or steps between locating the product and purchasing it as possible. Ideally, they should be able to see what they are buying, and how much it costs, add the item to their cart, view the subtotal and then checkout – meaning fill out their credit card and billing information.

A customer should NEVER have to fill in their credit card and billing information before they have their totals as you could lose them at that point.

It is also essential at “checkout” to get the necessary data from the customer to complete the sale only. This would be their Name, Billing Address, Phone, Email, and Shipping Address (if different from their billing address), their Credit Card number, expiration date and the little code that verifies that they have the credit card on hand. This is NOT the time to try and get every last detail about their demographics, survey questions, etc. Just collect the key information to get the sale DONE. Once the transaction is completed, you can ask them to do a short survey or whatever on the transaction receipt page.

3. HOW MUCH EACH PRODUCT COSTS.
There should be a price next to every product so that one can tell EXACTLY what they are spending on that item. If they are buying multiple items, they should be able to “View Cart” and see their sub-total at a glance so that they can add more items or remove something if they are over-budget.

4. METHODS OF PAYMENT.
Obviously if it is an on-line store, it is highly advisable to take major credit cards and the site should clearly display which major credit cards are accepted. If the site is designed to take PayPal, then that should be included as well. This is easily done by including the credit card icons that are accepted at the top and bottom of each page.

5. SECURE SHOPPING REASSURANCE.
It may seem like a small thing, but adding a line of text that says: Secure On-Line Shopping or Secure Shopping or Secure On-Line Transactions can make the difference between making a sale or losing a sale. This line of text can be accented with an icon of a padlock or a check mark, but the bottom line is that shoppers want and need reassurance. It goes without saying that you would have an SSL Certificate (secure socket layer) so that any transactions are secure. Many SSL Certificates have a “site badge” or icon that you can put on your website to show off to the world that your site is secure. This is an image that looks fancy or simple and says “secure” or “Verified secure” or something like that. It reminds the shopper visually that their purchase is safe and secure. Which makes them much more willing to buy from you.

6. AN INCENTIVE TO BUY.
There are dozens of ways to give incentives to buy, but one should take some time and care in creating these so that the website reinforces the notion that a visitor should buy something NOW. Below are some more common examples:

• Buy 1 – Get a 2nd for HALF PRICE
• FREE SHIPPING on Orders Over $75
• FREE GIFT with EVERY PURCHASE of $50 or More!
• LIMITED TIME ONLY – 10% OFF EVERY ORDER!
• BUY ONE – GET ONE FREE
• OFFER VALID ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST
• FLAT RATE SHIPPING JUST $5.95 PER ORDER
• 24 HOUR TURNAROUND – FAST SHIPPING
• LOWEST PRICE GUARANTEED
• JANUARY SPECIAL (or FEBRUARY or WHATEVER)

All of the above examples have been proven to work. The point to understand is that in the vast sea of Internet stores, it is important that a website has some incentive to BUY from them and not the competition.

A Word of Caution:
Take care in creating an incentive though, that it is a REAL incentive that can be offered and delivered on. You would not want to put “LOWEST PRICE GUARANTEE” on a website that obviously does not have good prices. Likewise, it would not be prudent to have a BUY ONE – GET ONE FREE offer on a low profit margin item that results in no profit with every sale.

The above are simply some examples of real incentives that have worked for others. Regardless of what is done, the bottom line is that there must be an incentive to BUY. Once it is worked out, it should be repeated on every page that has anything to do with BUYING. This can be included in the overall design, as an icon on the top or sides, next to ORDER NOW buttons, etc.

7. WEBSITE TRAFFIC STAT TRACKING.
Every sales site should have stat tracking to see where visitors are coming from, which pages they go to, where sales are lost and which pages or links lead to the most sales. This is KEY to knowing how effective a website ACTUALLY is. You can not assume that just because the sales are slim, that the website is not working without looking at stat tracking. What if the site gets 25 visitors a month and 10 of those buy??? If you didn’t know it had 25 visitors and you just assumed that the site wasn’t working “because only 10 people bought something last month…” You would be making a deadly assumption. In that scenario, the solution is to get TONS more visitors to the site, but you would not have known that WITHOUT stat tracking.

So use the 7 Points above to create a website that sells and then pour the coals on marketing the site. If the website has a product that is desirable by the public and is reasonably priced, then the website should make money if the 7 points above are followed.

©2007 Siouxie Boshoff and Visual Edge Desig, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How To Create A Web Site That Sells – Part One.

The Basic Things To Know About Creating a Website That Sells

The first thing to know when creating a website that is supposed to sell a product or several products, is that first and foremost, the website is supposed to SELL a product or several products. In other words, a person should be able to come to the website, find what they are looking for, and buy it. That is the simplicity of it. Sounds pretty straightforward, but you may be surprised to know that websites are created every day that do just the opposite and that omitting certain things on a Sales web site can kill the sale in an instant.

To create an effective Sales Generating web site, there are specific points that MUST be included in the web site that will:

1) Make it easy for a visitor to see what is for sale.
2) Instill confidence that they are in a REAL store that is legitimate.
3) Give them a compelling reason to buy the product(s) at that store.
4) Make it easy for them to actually BUY the product(s) from that store.

If any of the 4 points above are omitted, it is VERY likely that the visitor will leave the web site without buying anything.

Let’s take a real life retail store-front for example:
Say you wanted to buy a new pair of shoes today. You would either go to a shoe store you already know of and trust or you would look online for a store near you, or simply open the yellow pages to find the nearest shoe store. In any case, you would find a shoe store nearby.

Now, if that shoe store was hard to get to, you might try another store somewhere else. However, if you arrived at the store, but there appeared to be very few shoes, no cash register, no signs indicating that they take any credit cards, and no one to help you, you might turn around and walk out.

What if the shoe racks were disorderly, and shoes were NOT sorted by size or style? What if there was a “store clerk” that had NO register, was dressed in a slovenly fashion and then asked for your credit card, which he took in back and then came back after a while with a “thank you” note, but no receipt? What if there was NO sign indicating that anything in the store was guaranteed? What if the store had hand-written signs with marker on cardboard throughout? What if they made you give them your credit card and purchase the item BEFORE they told you how much you were spending? Would you feel comfortable shopping at such a store? I know I wouldn’t.

Believe it or not, there are many on-line stores that are the equivalent of such a store. In other words, you get to the website and it is difficult to find what you are looking for, there are no indications of how to pay, no guarantees, no phone numbers to get live help, no contact information on the website, no privacy statement or ordering information, and in some cases the store is set up so that you “add the item” to the cart, then checkout and give all your contact and credit card information before you can see how much you are spending.

All of these points create an unfriendly shopping environment and REDUCE the confidence of the person who is trying to buy something. These seemingly simple points when overlooked can cost a website 75% OR MORE of their sales.

In the next article I will talk about the 7 Key Elements in a Web Site That SELLS.

This article series was written by Siouxie Boshoff, author of the book “How To Get Your Website to The Top of The Search Engines.” Please visit www.visualedgedesign.com/seo_book.htm for more information.

©2006 Siouxie Boshoff and Visual Edge Design, Inc. All Rights Reserved.