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Does your Website Sell or Smell?Your website does not stand much chance of selling anything if it pays scant regard to the user.In other words your Site Visitor's experience, in terms of the following, is what will make your site sell or smell! The following 7 guidelines are all equally important and will determine the success of your website. 1. Functionality a) Functionality is a double-edged sword in that the site must fulfill the users' requirements only if they are your targetted users. You cannot be everything to everybody so just make your site easy for the people you want to please – your target market b) Your site's design is the interpretation of its functional requirements so unless it's functional it won't win many customers and will probably go out of fashion tomorrow. Therefore your site must function in the way the site visitor expects whilst maintaining a professional look etc. Functionality also includes automating routine tasks eg producing online docs, taking orders, triggering e-mails etc using forms & scripts 2. Content Content is King and must be meaningful, interesting & viewable in an acceptable font & color. Your site's content must also be kept fresh and updated frequently to maintain interest in the site and repeat visitors. The use of RSS can help deliver fresh content to your site on a daily basis. 3. Navigation Site Navigation must give your site visitors an indication of where they can go on your website and how they can get there. The navigation must be; clear (must look like navigation), consistent (the same on each page), predictable (style & location on the page eg lh side bar or top bar) and must lead to obvious content (navigation bar descriptions must be accurate) 4. Load Time If your site does not load in less than 12 seconds, the chances are that your site visitor will have given up waiting and closed the page. A lot of viewers access the net with dial up connections so you need to ensure that your pages load within the time frame for a 56.6kbs modem. Therefore a web page has to be designed in the ‘slimmest' way possible so as to minimize load time. Clean code also better for search engine spidering & bandwidth saving, ie the cleaner the html & css the less the load on your server. 5. Usability Your site may look great but if it's difficult for your visitors to figure out how to buy what they are looking for it's usability is not up to scratch. Usability refers to the ease with which your site's user interface can be used by its intended market to achieve its objectives. Usability incorporates many factors: design, functionality, structure, information architecture, and is a combination of good planning, good content and good design, putting yourself in your visitors' shoes, anticipating their needs and requirements. 6. Graphic Design In order to create an aesthetically pleasing look for your website you will need to use graphics, pictures, images & logos as a text heavy page is certainly not easy on the eye. Web safe colors should also be used to add to the overall effect. Remember to bear in mind that graphics (jpeg or gif) need to be of an appropriate size and compressed so as not to compromise the page loading speed. 7. Compatibility It is vitally important to design your site so that it is compatible for all browser and screen resolutions as you don't know what browser and resolution your site visitor will be using. This is important because pages that look fine in IE often look totally different in Firefox and pages look great at 1024x768 can be squashed up and overlapped at 800x600 Therefore to maximize your website's potential ensure that the above guidelines have all been employed. About the author: The author, Mark Bellinger is a successful businessman and creator of the following websites: http://www.onlinesynergy.za.net http://www.income.za.net http://www.internetbusiness.co.za Circulated by Article Emporium Best Internet Business Do you want to be involved with the best internet business available today? Are you willing to work hard to make your dreams come true? They can come true with your own business you set up and run on the internet. One of my favorite movies is "Field of Dreams."... How To Build A Profitable Niche Site Within 27 Minutes Copyright 2005 John Taylor Building niche a portfolio of profitable niche sites is a great way of developing a recurring income stream. A typical niche mini site may only earn you $60 per week but at that rate, four such sites will generate a yearly income of over $12,000. I... Do You Have a Hobby That Makes Money for You? Everyone has a hobby. We love all kinds of music, sports, movies, books... We have pets, we grow flowers, we build houses, buy cars... Some of us even love our jobs (boy, those are the lucky ones)... Dale Carnegie said: "Today is life - the only life you are sur... What to Do When People Want Everything for Free: How to Politely Get Rid of Mooches It's a sticky situation. A prospect, a site visitor, or just a casual acquaintance asks for your help or advice on something. You gladly give it, thinking it's a one-time “favor.” But instead of providing a little free advice, you've opened the door to an onslaught of mooching! Now... Internet Millionaire Mindset: Is Your Brain Sabotaging Your Marketing Success? Copyright 2004 Rick Miller Have you ever wondered why some Internet marketers seem to have success with every single project? Do they have some magical power that you don't? Would you like to quickly get that power? In a recent interview for the List Cru... Choose Your Home Business Carefully And Then Really Work At It! By Kirk Bannerman I've had many active and enthusiastic business team members that were their own worst enemies because they exhibited the classic "flea on a griddle" behavior pattern and jumped around chasing one business opportunity today, and then an... Intangible Benefits Can Add Up for Those Who Work from Home Copyright 2004 Mal Keenan Working from home offers benefits that just aren't available to anyone else. Whether monetary or lifestyle, these benefits can far outweigh those found at a job as an employee. Whether you work at home already, are thinking about it, or your life ci... Does your Website Sell or Smell? Your website does not stand much chance of selling anything if it pays scant regard to the user. In other words your Site Visitor's experience, in terms of the following, is what will make your site sell or smell! The following 7 guidelines are all equally importa... How to get more Sign-Ups to your Newsletter It never seems to amaze me how often I still see to this very day where people have gone to the effort of creating a hum dinger newsletter and paid for a good emailing responder but haven't made their offer juicy enough on their website to get mass amounts of people to si... Island Marketing ... Is PayDotCom a good alternative to ClickBank? PayDotCom is a new payment portal for small business owner. The best advantage of using PayDotCom is it has a built-in affiliate network, so every new merchants can get an army of affiliates fast just as what ClickBank is providing. There is a main difference between PayDo... Magic Bullets Do You Know What Your Cusomers Want Do you ever wonder what your customers want? Most business owners ask themselves that question daily. I know I do and I bet you do too. I was watching one of my favorite marketers speak recently and he said something that struck a chord with me and got me thinking. He said... 3 Overlooked Ways to Get Hundreds of Links and Prospects to Your Blog Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul Did you know that there are free ways that you can get links back to your blog overnight? That after a few days they can number in the hundreds? No matter what you market on the internet at some point you'll face the issue of increas... How to Build Massive Keyword Lists - Part 1 As keyword marketing becomes more and more expensive and competitive, it has become essential when building your lists to focus on the maximum number of phrases and their variations that a surfer might enter into the search engines. Why? Because according to Amit ... Your Home Based Business Can Be A Real Time Trap The reasons people express for wanting to work from home are many and varied, but most home based business owners cite the ability to set their own hours as a major factor in their decision to work at home. However, many people that have work at home businesses...
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