No one would want to buy fruit from a grocer that left the spoiled fruit mixed in with the fresh fruit. Neither would anyone want to purchase a car from a dealership with junked autos mixed in with the new cars! We all know this, and need to keep it in mind when we design our websites. Your website is YOUR “grocery store” or “car dealership”, so you must take the time to make it an enjoyable place for buyers to visit. It should not give your visitors any reason to think that you are an amateur, rather than a trained and experienced professional. Your website always reflects directly on your product or service, so having a well-designed website is an absolute must.

The first key to your website design is “surfability”. Take some time right now to check out several different web pages. What is it that makes them appealing? Were there any that you couldn’t wait to get away from? Why was that? Take the time to make some notes and do your research well. Remember that people usually have a specific goal in mind when they visit your site. They either want information or they’re looking to buy a product. Make it easy for your visitor to find what they want without them having to search for it. And don’t put extraneous information on your site that is not relevant to your product. Your website content should convince the buyer that they need your product to solve their problem.

Your home page should do one job. This page should be the easiest starting point for a potential customer to find and purchase the products or services on your site. It should load very quickly and be easy to view. Here is your chance to make a great first impression - helping you to close, rather than lose, the sale. Keep things simple. Provide easy to find links to the pages that your visitor will want to see. One good method of laying out your home page is with the use of tables. And while pertinent graphics can help with sales, be sure to keep the size and number of graphics to a minimum. An excessive number of banners, buttons, or special effects can slow down your web page load time significantly. In fact, most people will likely click off to some other website if your page is taking more then about 10 seconds to load - even with a 56K dial-up connection.

Try to use mild colors to make your web site easier on the eyes. And you’re better off sticking to basic black and white if your website provides a lot of content for the user to read. You can still brighten up your web page by using color in tables to highlight, compare, or emphasize certain information, but make sure not to stray too far from your overall, professional design. Try to present a look that will be most appealing to those who are most likely to visit your site frequently.

Also, many users still use a monitor resolution of only 800×600 pixels, so keep your web page designed to fit well even with that screen size. Or set the table widths on your pages to a percentage value, rather than a fixed pixel width, so that your web page will automatically “resize” itself to fit the visitor’s screen resolution. Remember also that there are several different browsers that your visitors may be using, so try to ensure that your web pages still look good on all of the most popular browsers.

In closing, be sure to keep in mind that the overall look and feel of your website will greatly influence how well your products or services will sell. A properly designed website should be a key component of your marketing strategy for your products and services.