Do You Really Need Design Tips From Me?

Today I was prompted to create an entry after I received an email from a business owner who wanted to trade links for me.

I won't identify the individual, except to say that he was interested in receiving enquiries for his steel framed building business.

As that is an area I am interested in at the moment, I took a quick look at his site and was surprised at what I saw.

The site looked like it had been knocked up in a spare half hour.

Taking up most of the space "above the fold" was an advertisement offering a free Xerox colour printer!

Why???

It's been a long time since I have seen a site like it.

A little down the page was an ad for batteries, together with a $5 off coupon. Then came a huge advertisement for a free home alarm system, another for Adobe Creative Suite , Flowerstore.com, Free Cell Phones and more.

Completely lost somewhere on this page must have been some information about steel framed buildings!

Even the contact page for the company was loaded with ads. This time, flowerstore.com featured prominently, along with two ads for an online voice player.

The "about us" page had ads for flowers again along with a nice Microsoft Office Live logo and link.

I thought that EVERYONE wanting to promote their business online would automatically know the basics.

I was wrong.

Here are the basics:

1) If you're not a designer, hire a designer - they are cheap and can work on a per-project basis.

2) If you fancy designing your own site, use something like XSITEPRO because it's really difficult to get it wrong!

3) Keep the screen size of your web page to no more than 800 pixels if you want to be certain to avoid having your visitors scroll widthways. Nobody likes having to do that.

4) Have a standard design running through your site so that your visitors know they are still on your site. Don't change the colour scheme halfway through.

5) Make it easy to navigate. Include instructions like "click here for this information".

6) A web site is a selling tool first and foremost. Remember to SELL. People want and need to be sold when they land on your web site. Most web surfers are ready to buy when they land, as long as you have targeted them right.

7) Only add links to your web site that are relevant to your market. If you're selling construction services, your visitors are not ready to make a purchase for flowers. Really, they're not!

8) Having a contact page is great, but on a services page, include your contact information at every opportunity - preferably after each sales message. Why make it hard for your customers to contact you? It's not an intelligence test!

9) Wherever possible, have an autoresponder that sends your visitor an email after they have contacted you. This way, you can build up a free mailing list of people interested in your services. Offer some free information and you'll get many more sign-ups to your list. It's not as hard as you think. I use Aweber's service and I wouldn't be without it.

10) Keep things simple.

I'm sure you don't need tips from me about web design, but clearly some people do need a helping hand. It's difficult to remember the early days when I first started out online. I made all of the mistakes along the way, just like everone else.

So, this post is for all the newbies out there. I hope it helps someone!