Help Them Do What You Want Them To Do

1. Don't assume your visitors can find what they want
2. Don't beat their eyeballs with endless popups or animation - this is too far the other way
3. Do make your contact information highly visible in a prime location if you want to be contacted
4. Do make sure your important information and your call to action are 'above the fold'
5. Do run basic user testing - ask friends or family to do this if your budget is tight.

Avoid going soft-sell on your website, unless you are 110% sure that this is not what your visitors want. I'm not talking about ramming it down their throats, popping up ads, and having flashing banners all over the page, oh, no. But what you do want in plain sight, for everyone to see, is your contact number (if you want to generate leads for example), or your shopping cart or product pages (if you're selling product online for example). You want your visitor to have to make the least effort humanly possible with that great big heavy mouse they're using - remember, it's hassle for most visitors to loc
ate anything at all on a webpage. Stick it under their noses, and they'll pick up the scent.

One important thing to remember here is what we call the 'fold' - this comes from old newspaper parlance. The fold = the place on your screen where your webpage cuts off. It's great to see your website design on your glorious 22" widescreen dual display monitors set to 1600 x 1200 resolution. But, most people will still be viewing on 1024 x 768, with some lower, some higher. Make sure your critical navigation and calls to action are visible at these lower screen resolutions so you don't let any visiting fish slip through your net.

I want to make sure my own sites was easy for everyone to navigate. My mother has trouble turning on the computer, so she is a great test for my call to action on my website. In my case, I asked her to contact me via my website - you get the idea. If someone not very techy can tell what your call to action is, you're heading in the right direction. If you have a budget for user testing, then you can pursue a much more sophisticated approach to test how effective your call to action is - split A/B testing etc., but that is beyond the scope of this article.