Make Your Web Site User-Friendly!

Making a web site is easy. Making a good web site is not soeasy. There are many things you have to consider if you want tomake a good and successful web site.

Everyone who knows at least something about marketing knows thatyou have to fit your product so that suit customers need. Don'texpect that customers will accommodate to your web site. If, fromsome reason, they get an impression that your site is confusingand that you didn't tried hard to make their visit as easy aspossible. As you know, there are many web sites, so why do youthink that anyone will bother to stay at your site if it is notenough good.

So, how can you make your web site user-friendly? I will try toexplain you now.

Loading

In order that your visitor see your web site it must be loadedpretty fast. I could never understand someone who's web sitesis loading several minutes. Do these people think that peoplewill really wait for their masterpiece? You bet that they won't.Your page shouldn't be bigger than 30K. When you design yourweb site you should first put one table above you web sitecontent where you will put a sponsorship banners. This is becausethat your advertisers can get good visibility. Also, your logoand company name should load very fast. One of the mainmarketing principles is that people have to remember your name,logo and your message. You probably have many competitors. Yourbrand-name have to be remembered. Otherwise, it is most likelythat they will forget you and never come back again.

You can test your web site loading page at:

http://www.websitegarage.com

Colors

OK, let's suppose that your page have a decent loading time andthat visitor decided to give it a try to your web site and yourproduct. So, you better that they find complementar colors onyour web site. I guess that after they have come to your siteyou don't want that they leave with eye-sight problems. Youshould know some basic knowledge about how certain color fitsto some other. Colors on your site can also depend about theyour web site's type. It means that if you want to have somekid site your site can be very colorful with some animatedimages. Business sites, in most cases don't have to be tocolorful.

You can find useful info about designing your web site at:

http://www.webreference.com
http://www.htmlgoodies.com
http://www.dynamicdrive.comhttp://www.useit.com

Information

If someone would asked you what is the single most importantthing on web site, I hope that you would say that isinformation. You won't have many benefits if you hired someonewho is expert in programs like Dreamweaver, who will make fancyanimations in Flash, who will make extraordinary images inPhotoshop and Corel Draw if people on your site can't findsomething because they come in the first place. That isinformation. Unless your site should be some kind of referencefor company who wants to hire a web designer and you want toshow them what you can, people in most cases are not muchinterested in design. Take Google, for example. Its designcould make anyone with a basic web design design knowledge.Google is the best search engine not because some fancy images.It is the best because of the information he provides. Rememberthat when you design your web site. Beside information aboutyour product, people should be able to find a contactinformation on the first page. Also, it is not useful to havemany info on your web site if people can't easily to find. Youshould try that all info on your web site be accessible with3 or less clicks.

Automatization

It is very useful that you put some automatization on your website. Why is that important? Well, if you expect that yourvisitors do something for you, first you have to do somethingfor them. What I mean is that you have to help them to make someactions. I will tell you several examples where automatizationcan be used.

Let's say your site have a lot of visitors. It won't be very wisesolution that everyone who would like to ask you somethingcontact you via email. It is not very convenient because youwould get a lot of emails that takes up considerable time toanswer. Good solution when you want to offer your visitors achoice to contact you about several topics to contact you viaform mail. Then you ask for necessary info they have to provide.This is good because you won't get emails that are too broad norto narrow. There are other use of form mails. For example forsubscribing to newsletters, to order products, to send yourlisting etc..

Another good choice for using web site automatization aremultiple subscription check-boxes. In case you don't know, thisenables that your visitors can subscribe to several newslettersat once, which means by entering their email address only once.It is very important to have this script if you have severalnewsletters. Don't expect that many people will bother tosubscribe to several newsletters if you don't make them easierto do it.

You can see examples at:

http://www.marketingsherpa.com
http://www.emailuniverse.com

People often ask their visitors to recommend their site.Recommending a site can be done very effectively if you usea recommendation script. There people can enter email addressesof their friends and they will receive an invitation from hi orshe to visit that web site. There are many scripts for thispurpose.

You can find useful scripts for your site at:

http://www.hotscripts.com
http://www.cgi-resources.com

There are companies which offer this service:

http://www.recommend-it.com

You have just read some tips for making your site user-friendly.Of course, there are many more to do. When you design your website you have to put yourself in your visitor's shoes and askyourself how would like that a certain site look like. I wantyou to make great friendships!

______________________________

Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit: http://www.infacta.com

______________________________

NOTE: This article may be used freely in opt-in publications andwebsites, provided that the resource box is included and thelinks are active.