Designing a Profitable Home Business Web Site
http://www.iwebdevs.net/articles/650/1/Designing-a-Profitable-Home-Business-Web-Site/Page1.html
Leva Duell
By Leva Duell
Published on 06/15/2009
Find out what it takes to design a profitable web site for your home business.
It's critical to know your goal before you start designing a web site. You have to determine what action you want your visitors to take and then tell them exactly what you want them to do.
Do you want your visitors to call you? Or do you want them to give you their email address so you can stay in touch with them?
You must include easy, logical navigation that leads people to your goal. If they don't find the information they're looking for easily and immediately, they won't spend time looking for it and they will leave your site.
Your products or services, newsletter subscription, contact information and other information has to be easy to find through consistent navigation on all pages.
Keep your design and navigation simple and to the point. Avoid confusing your visitors with complex scroll down menus and don't overwhelm your visitors with too many choices. Confused visitors will leave your site. They won't subscribe or call or buy from you.
Turning your home page into a Flash animation only makes sense if you have a product you need to illustrate with animation. Entry pages with Flash animation that doesn't tell people what the site is about are not effective because you don't give people a reason to visit your site.
An effective home page will target your audience and tell them immediately what information they'll find at your site and what benefits they'll receive from visiting your site.
Your design, colors, layout, navigation, and your sales copy will affect sales. In fact, your sales copy is even more important than the design of your site. Include benefit-oriented headlines, action words and power words. Have a clear call to action and provide exact directions telling visitors what you want them to do. You need to include incentives to make them take the desired action. For example, click here to order this money-saving book or call to request a free web site critique or get a free consultation.
Make sure people can buy instantly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If people can't order through your site at any time of the day or night when they are ready to buy, you will lose sales.
The work is just beginning when your site is finished. You have to promote your site. You'll be amazed at how many people still think that their site will show up in search engines automatically! They are surprised that their new site won't show up when typing their url in the search box!
To summarize, an effective home business web site has a simple, tasteful design, user-friendly, clear navigation and well-written content that sells benefits to a targeted audience and motivates them to take action.
Do you want your visitors to call you? Or do you want them to give you their email address so you can stay in touch with them?
You must include easy, logical navigation that leads people to your goal. If they don't find the information they're looking for easily and immediately, they won't spend time looking for it and they will leave your site.
Your products or services, newsletter subscription, contact information and other information has to be easy to find through consistent navigation on all pages.
Keep your design and navigation simple and to the point. Avoid confusing your visitors with complex scroll down menus and don't overwhelm your visitors with too many choices. Confused visitors will leave your site. They won't subscribe or call or buy from you.
Turning your home page into a Flash animation only makes sense if you have a product you need to illustrate with animation. Entry pages with Flash animation that doesn't tell people what the site is about are not effective because you don't give people a reason to visit your site.
An effective home page will target your audience and tell them immediately what information they'll find at your site and what benefits they'll receive from visiting your site.
Your design, colors, layout, navigation, and your sales copy will affect sales. In fact, your sales copy is even more important than the design of your site. Include benefit-oriented headlines, action words and power words. Have a clear call to action and provide exact directions telling visitors what you want them to do. You need to include incentives to make them take the desired action. For example, click here to order this money-saving book or call to request a free web site critique or get a free consultation.
Make sure people can buy instantly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If people can't order through your site at any time of the day or night when they are ready to buy, you will lose sales.
The work is just beginning when your site is finished. You have to promote your site. You'll be amazed at how many people still think that their site will show up in search engines automatically! They are surprised that their new site won't show up when typing their url in the search box!
To summarize, an effective home business web site has a simple, tasteful design, user-friendly, clear navigation and well-written content that sells benefits to a targeted audience and motivates them to take action.