Diesel News

Stab at it? Your Web Design Fashion Show

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Your website is being judged. As soon as someone finds your website it is immediately analyzed, processed and determined worthy of staying or gone to another website in 1.3 seconds. Your customers are good at that; knowing what they want, what they like and they are particularly adept at knowing if a website has what they desire.

How do you keep this 1.3 second attention span for a few seconds more? Quality helps. If your website looks like your 3 year old did the graphic design, then you are probably out of luck. Web design, graphic design, it all follows the same rules as conventional advertising. Sex sells, streamlined, sleek, elegant, powerful, buy here, buy now, amazing, stunning, these are the words and ideas that keep the attention of a consumer.

Your website should go through some extensive consumer testing before you launch it. If you trust only your eye, even if you have the most artistic eye in the world, you may be surprised to get very little consumer action on your site. Test it out on a few people you don’t know. Find some random people (the internet is virtually made for that) and get their opinion. Ask them how you could do it better, expect some rudeness, expect some solid advice, but definitely don’t rely only on your friend’s opinion as they might not give you the most reliable and usable information regarding something you spent so much time creating.

Even better than creating the website yourself, hire a web designer. Let them worry about pleasing you; let them do all the hard work and you can sit back and judge their work. Outsourcing your web design is an important factor in remaining sane. Unless you have developed a website in the past 2 years, then there will be a lot of learning and relearning to do before you can really get the site off the ground. Web designers are practiced, up to date with current technology and have the tools at their disposal. Spend the money for quality work and work on what you need to do to improve your business.

Web designers are accustomed to using those 1.3 seconds to grab a visitor visually. They know the tricks, the techniques and are highly skilled at making the most of 1.3 seconds. Once viewers of your website are hooked by the elegant design, then it’s up to you to turn them into buyers. Quality content for your product descriptions - that can also be outsourced. Maybe even your web development team has a writer on staff that could spice up the flow of your product descriptions.

Just like with web design, if you are not a great writer, then don’t try writing all of your content for your site. Seek the help of a professional content developer, writer or product description specialist. Websites take a lot of cooks to make a delicious site, so don’t try to do it all on your own, seek out quality professionals and let them develop a site that will pay off for you in the long run.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone other than myself. All material is copywritten and cannot be reprinted or copied without the owner's consent.

Michael Whitlatch

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