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 Design Mistakes that will cost you sales.
I have posted this article after recently taking a look at a few of our clients websites, some of them designed by us some of them not. When 2001 web designs a website we give it a nice clean professional look and feel and of course take care of the coding to make sur it is search engine friendly.
Then we let our clients loose on the site to create their own pages and add their products. While they may not realize it some of our clients are costing themselves sales or losing potential memberships due to some very simple mistakes made when creating pages themselves. The idea of this article is to both educate you and make sure your site is not making any of these costly mistakes.
I will be referencing cubecart a lot during this article, as most of the sites we have built for clients use this software, but these points also apply to non cubecart sites. Let me first begin by saying that just because cubecart comes with lots and lots of functions in the built in text editor, it does not mean you have to use them all, let me explain how this can be bad for your sales.
Web Design Standards
One of the biggest things that will cause a website to lose sales (apart from lack of promotion) are basic design flaws and layout mistakes. There are certain "No No's" that you may not be aware of when building your sites pages.
When a website is designed by a decent web designer they will follow industry accepted standards for web design. These standards are created and adhered to by web designers to maximize the effectiveness of modern websites for both search engine indexing and more importantly ease of use of visitors.
I am sure I do not have to tell you that the visitors are the number one consideration when designing any website.
How Visitors Use Your Site
Millions of dollars of study have been done into how web users behave when they visit websites. These studies tracked the eye movements of web users to see EXACTLY what they look at and for how long on a visit to a website.
Here is the most surprizing they found relating to web design:
The visitor has an overall glance at the page to decide whether or not the site looks professional and or useful to them, this decision is made in under 2 seconds, that is all you have to make a good impression or they leave. They then look to your main navigation and page content for the info or product they came to your site for.
Take a look at the following image results from these tests and look at how little the visitors focuses on your sites graphic design. The colored areas are where they focussed their eyes.
Notice how they read the website in an F pattern, concentrating on information and text and not the rest of the layout.
We will often suggest to clients that perhaps they should change something in the pages they have created because it does not conform to industry standards, again what you need to remember is that web design standards are not set to please the industry or other webmasters, they are based on what customers like and respond to as discovered in the above research.
The Mistakes
Here are some basic No No's for your site these are based on what web users say annoys them, plus a few mistakes that can affect that VITAL first glance to decide how professional your site is. Be sure to read this list and if your site has any of these errors we highly recommend you correct them.
The first tw mistakes are to do with non text issues then we will move into the text problems as a result of over using the text editor.
1. Pop Up Windows (not to be confused with clickable links that open in different windows)
Web users DO NOT like these no matter when they appear. Windows that pop up without any action from the user are BAD PERIOD! They annoy web users who find them invasive and immediately close them. This is usually followed by their immediate departure from the site. I have heard the excuse "I only show them to visitors who are leaving" that may well be true, but if they remember you annoyed them with a pop up they will not come back.
2. Flashing Banner Ads
Mixed feelings on these some web users hate them others don't mind them. Our way of thinking is that anything that flashes advertising another site has the ability to attract the users eye away from YOUR product, service or the information on your site. We are not saying don't use these but be careful where you place them. Do not put them above your main content or at the sides of pages near your navigation. If you want to use animated banners put them towards the bottom of your pages.
HOWEVER if you run a free information site and your income is derived from clicks on these banners or other ads then put them where you think they are most likely to be clicked even at the top of the page.
3. Funky Fonts
This is a BIG no no. Windows computers come with core fonts that are chosen as core fonts for a good reason....ease of reading. Yes we know you want to make your site original and different but trust us the comic sans font or any non standard font that web users are not used to can affect how much information they read and their overall impression of your site. Cubecart for example includes a very easy to read standard font set there really is no need to mess with the fonts used.
3. Colored Text
Ok let me state this as simply as I can 99.9999999% of the time text on web pages should be BLACK on a white background, links should be blue and warnings should be RED. It is a fact that black on white is the easiest on the eye when reading. How many books have you ever bought with blue green yellow or orange text? You might think that Green, Pink, Blue Or Brown writing looks nice on your site but it does not conform with web standards and looks unprofessional. REMEMBER the first glance of less than two seconds, if a visitor finds your site unprofessional they will not buy or sign up. Is your purple text worth losing sales for?
Exceptions to this are Headings and sub-headings which can and should be a well chosen contrasting color. That color should normally blend with the rest of your skin in a way that it doesn't look odd. Take a look at our own home page and see what we mean. The orange headers compliment the colors in our logos at the top of the page and so do not look out of place.
These types of headings are normally colored by cubecart's style sheets as standard so there is no need for you to change the color of the text.
4. Text Size
Again something you do not need to mess with if you use cubecart. Cubecarts style sheets specify the text sizes as percentages or fixed font sizes in standard css language. This allows web users to view your site using their own computer specified viewing settings and font sizes when viewing web pages, very useful for those who may have visual disabilities.
Different computers are set at different screen resolutions though your resized text may look great to you it can look awful on the visitors screen. Try not to mess with text sizes other than for headings, in which case you should really use the drop down formatting options for headings in your cubecart admin.
5. Text Centering or Justifying
I can not stress enough how sloppy and amateur this looks. The web standard for text is to align it to the left of the page (headings too). Centered text will make a web designer cry and a webmaster raise their eyebrows in disbelief.
Imagine how silly Google or Yahoo results would look centered instead of left aligned. Your pages are no different. Justifying text is also a no no, this creates very odd spacing in your paragraphs and can make information hard to read.
6. Too much blurb!
This is the biggest single mistake sites who sell products make. Your home page should have MAXIMUM 1 paragraph of text at the top of the page IMMEDIATELY followed by images of your product. If you want to include large sections of text on your home page you should put this text AFTER the pictures of the product.
Let me explain something. It is true that Google and other search engines look for that text on your home page to help rank and index your site, but it does not matter where on the page that text is.
If you want massive amounts of descriptive text on your cubecart home page for search engine purposes, contact us and we will hard code it underneath your latest products. At the top of your page before your latest products you should have a SHORT paragraph only. Here is an example for an imaginary flower site.
Welcome to Flora's Flowers. We deliver beautiful flowers worldwide free of charge to your loved ones. We have a wide range of bouquets, roses, carnations and all your favorite flowers and blooms. Beautiful flowers created for you by our professional florists.
See how that is keyworded to the product of the site? A visitor will scan that paragraph because it is nice and short. They can learn that there are no shipping costs without reading your full shipping policy on your home page. Then what do they want to see? Pictures of the flowers, choices and prices so SHOW THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO SEE, WHAT THEY CAME FOR!
Put yourself in your clients shoes always and learn two simple facts:
A. Web users want it and they WANT IT QUICK!
Imagine for a moment that tomorrow morning your wireless mouse stops working. You dig around and find the old back up wired mouse but you want a new wireless one. Off you go to Google search for "Trust wireless mouse" get the results and click a link to visit a site that sells what you are looking for.
What do you want to see now???? The mouse and the price what else?
B. Most of your visitors do not like reading they just scan your pages.
Back again to the broken mouse, you click the link and on the home page of the site you are greeted with.....
Welcome to Freds electronics. Freds electronics was founded in 1996 by fred webmaster who was tired of being cheated out of his hard earned cash by large electronics chains.
After buying an overpriced pc, an over priced mouse and an over priced printer Fred decided it was about time there was a supplier of computer related electronics that was reasonable in price and shipped quickly so you can order from the comfort of your own home.
The aim of freds electronics is to supply our customers with top quality electronics and computer accessories without the fuss and pressured sales you would encounter in PC world.
All our items are sourced wholesale from leading distributors blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah,
SCROLL SCROLL SCROLL SCROLL...........
SHOW ME THE DAMNED MOUSE AND THE PRICE PLEASE ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!
Put your site information on the about us page so that if the visitor wants to read it they can and if they don't they are not required to scroll past it to get to your products. Put your shipping information on a shipping info page WEB USERS DON'T LIKE READING MORE THAN THEY ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO.
Got the point yet????? If not go to eBay, go to Walmart's site, go to Ford go to ANY big retailers website you can think of and tell me what you see. You see very little text and lots of pictures of products with prices, so learn from the big boys show your product first.
7. Monster Paragraphs.
These are mainly found on information pages. Remember what I told you above, this is again based on the MILLIONS of dollars of research into the eye movements of web users. Unless your reader is REALLY interested in the information they will scan your pages for information not read them. So make it easy for them to scan. Break your information up into small paragraphs with sub headings that describe the paragraph. Help them find the specific part of the information they require.
Using this method the visitor will read much more of the information than they would if your paragraphs are long or do not have sub headings as it is much easier on the eye.
Our own terms of service page is a good example of this. A lot of information split into short paragraphs that helps the scanning process and allows the reader to stop at terms or conditions that may me checking out before signing up with 2001 web.
In closing let me clear up one thing. ONLY PEOPLE WHO OWN WEBSITES (you) AND WEB DESIGNERS give a flying hoot about the cosmetics of your site, visitors consider it for less than two seconds then look for info or products they came for. They are hunting for information to make a decision so show them the info as quickly as you can and make it EASY to read.
Is your site making any of the mistakes above???? They could be costing you money. If you have any questions about layout for your site let us know, remember unlike other hosts we care about your success we are more than prepared to guide you.
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