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The most effective business websites As
with television commercials, the single purpose of a website is to
promote a company in a positive light that will ultimately lead to
greater sales. Never let a "web designer" develop the
website for you. A web designer should be produce the website under
the supervision of an on line marketing master, usually working with
an advertising agency. There are many marketing techniques, some
obvious, but many less obvious that in most cases, would be beyond
the scope of an html web script writer (web developer's) area of expertise.
Most business
websites fall into these categories: To promote the image of the
company or to sell to the website visitor a physical product, such as
clothing, machinery, food, or other devices or to sell or inform the
website visitor of a companies services, such as cleaning, repair,
legal or similar. In some cases, the purpose of the business website
is to inform the visitor about a particular product, such as a
medical company or a car company. Each of these sites requires a
different tactic in order to be effective and should only be
developed by a web marketing expert and not a technical web designer.
Business websites,
are constantly evolving, however certain key elements are essential
for an effective website. First and most critical, is that a website
must be viewable on every computer, tablet, and cell phone,
regardless of the operating system or the age of the operating system
being used. Further, it is essential to remember that many web have
many different operating speeds and memory capacities. In order for a
website to be viewable on every computer, it is important to avoid
the necessity for the viewer to have add on's such as flash or speed
reducing script such as Java, Java Script and similar. The speed of
opening up a page is essential. If too many things are operating in
the background or if the images are too large, the viewer will
quickly go to a different website. I am sure that most people are
familiar with "click bait sites" displaying alluring images
and only to be slowed down by a million things operating in the
background. Avoid using add-ons even if your web developer insists
that they make the site more "creative". Remember, the main
purpose of the website is to sell the product and to present the
company in the best possible light to anyone who comes to the site.
Websites are
different than print ads or television commercials since a website
has the potential to be interactive. Further, the viewer of a website
is free to jump to another website at any moment, unlike a person
watching a TV program, during a station break, who wants to continue
watching the program after the commercials end. Further, web viewers
tend to have a type of attention deficit disorder and rarely stay on
a site for more than 10 or 20 seconds. So you must present your
effective message in that time. But how to do it? In the old days of
the internet, people developed complex websites that were visually
appealing, however arguably not a good sales medium. The problem was
often "where to click" to order or get additional
information. One should never assume that every website visitor will
understand every symbol and where to click. Many people today do not
realize that the three lines on the some websites indicates more
information. One should spell out where to click. Most people do not
have time for cleverly hidden or trendy click locations.
I am under the
belief that click down menu's are not effective and that the company
loses a certain number of potential sales if they use click down menus.
Moving images on a
website, unless specifically demonstrating the product being sold,
are distracting and interferes with the web visitors ability to read.
Motion and animated graphics should always be avoided on an effective
business website.
Can disorganized
ever be more effective? In certain cases, surprisingly, the seemingly
disorganized website can be more effective in selling more products
to the website visitor, than they had expected to buy. For example,
if you company specializes in tools by having perhaps 50 different
tools displayed on the same page forces the visitor to hunt for what
they want to buy. In their hunt, they may well find something else to
buy as well. The same technique is often used in super markets, where
for example, the market may mix cans of soup on the shelves, rather
than organizing them in alphabetic order. This way the shopper may
well find other soups that they will also buy, thus increasing sales.
Unlike television
commercials, sound, music or catchy jingles are never good on
websites. Sound on a website is never good, since it distracts people
from reading the information. On a side note, with the exception of
very mild background music, music is also never acceptable on a
Youtube type video.
If the goal of the
website is to sell a product on line, the person must be told to
"buy now". As with television commercials, this simple
phrase "buy now" increases sales by a measurable margin.
Remember, the
product or service being sold is always number one. Trendy is not
good, unless it helps to sell the product.
---
Frank X. Didik, March 9,
2016
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