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Posts Tagged ‘web design’

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Who Does Your Web Page Feature

Posted: February 10th, 2009 Author: Michael Regan Posted in business, marketing, web design | 2 Comments »

Take a critical look at your website. Does the first page show off your product or your web designers skills?

Too many web designers see your web page as a place to show off their skills. While you want your website to be attractive, the focus MUST be on the product and not the designer’s skills.

Colour selection, image placement and page copy must all focus on the product. Getting this right separates the business website from those that just pretend to be business sites.

Here are three things you can check to see how well your website supports your product:

  • Is the header less than ¼ of the visible page in height?
  • Is the product identified above the fold?
  • Is the call to action above the fold?

Unless the header is featuring your product it shouldn’t take up more than ¼ of the page. The product and the call to action should be seen without having to scroll down the page.

 

They Are Not Looking

Posted: September 23rd, 2008 Author: Michael Regan Posted in marketing, web design | No Comments »

Launching a new website is always an exciting event. Finally, all the effort any planning of the last few months is going to start paying off.

Launching a site for our first major client was even more exciting. Our budding reputation was riding on this site. We wanted everything to be perfect. And, we thought it was. The client, a local resort, was happy, the site looked great, even the transfer to the new site went smooth.

The client had spread the word about th new site to her friends and suppliers and we were anxiously waiting for feedback. To our surprise the first comment we got back was “How do I book a room?”.

We checked the site – there was “BOOK NOW” graphic in the top left corner. We checked the link and it was working. What was wrong.

We now know, thanks to studies by Enquiro that some graphics can act as a barrier. “Blending your conversion trigger into that graphic makes it invisible.” In our case, the “BOOK NOW” graphic was overlaid on the main header graphic.

The solution was quick and simple. We added a “BOOK NOW” link into the menu. Later we did our own study we confirmed – no one was clicking on the graphic.

Fortunately, the client is still with us — only the graphic is gone.

 

Respect Your Customers

Posted: March 1st, 2008 Author: Michael Regan Posted in marketing, SEM, SEO | No Comments »

Saturday at 11:30 is time for “The Age of Persuasion” on CBC radio.

If you haven’t been following the series, hosted by Terry O’Reilly, you are missing an entertaining and informative series on adevertising and marketing. Fortunately, the series is now available on streaming audio.

This week the topic was “23 things I’d Like to Change About Advertising”. As usual the presentation was entertaining and informative. However, like a number of O’Reilly’s, presentation it can be boiled down to one phrase – respect your customers.

In “23 Things . . . “, O’Reilley covers many of the complaints we all have with adveristing. Everyone from telemarketers to loud business owners doing their own cheap commercial make his hit list. Absent, however, are the many ways that the Internet has come up with to disrespect the customer.

Forget spam – even spam websites. Real businesses, with real websites have found new and innovative ways to disrespect the customer.

Here is my top ten hit list:

  1. “Under Construction” pages. If the page isn’t ready don’t link to it.
  2. Broken links – why are you wasting my time with a broken link – remove it!
  3. IE only sites. Yes – they do exist. What other business model turns away 20% of its potential clients.
  4. Closely related are sites that are not cross browser compatible. They look good with one browser, usually IEx, but fail to display properly on others.
  5. Splash pages – again, you are wasting my time.
  6. Flash only pages. Pity the person on a dialup who has to wait while some moron features his graphics designer – not his product.
  7. Pages that load the whole image instead of a thumbnail.
  8. Broken Javascript. If your page relies on Javascript make sure it works.
  9. Animated images the endlessly repeat. Show it once then STOP!
  10. Tiny fonts. Yes I know how to change the font size – but not everyone does. Either use a bigger font, or let the user select a larger font size.


 
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