A great company website can go along way in creating a good impression about your company. It can act as a great marketing tool for your customers and as more and more customers turn to the internet to source for information you’ll not need to spend too much money on marketing.
Surprisingly making your company website have a good appeal doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money. You can follow the 8 guidelines below to make your website great.
1. Clearly define your goals.
Most of the times your website is the first point of interface with your customers. The most critical part is therefore to establish the effect of the website on the web visitors. Is your goal to sell airline tickets, to offer hotel accommodation or to sell tech accessories? The design process of the website must support this goal.
2. Know your target customers.
If your website is to trade in currency for example it has to look formal and serious as opposed to an entertainment website which can be joky.Customers will most likely perceive your seriousness with the appeal of the website.
3. The site should be easy to navigate.
The home page or index page should open quickly and if you have stuff for customers to download it should do so quickly. A site map can be a great idea if you have many items to offer on the site. A customer who found the information he required quickly from your website is more likely to return than one who got frustrated when looking for particular information.
4. Make the site enjoyable.
Irritants like music and pop ups are a great nuisance unless you’re in that business. Redirection to other pages is also a turn off as customers can be quite restless.
5. Make the site aesthetic.
A smart and well designed website will make the business, however small, look great. It should create a distinct visual effect and the use of colors and logos must depict the company’s image. Remember packaging is the most important thing in business and however good your business might be, wrong packaging makes it appear shoddy. The site should look dynamic and interactive and not merely static. If you create a static website you are going to end up as the only visitor to the website.
6. The site should be straight to the point.
Web surfers have very limited attention span and therefore the content should be straight to the point. Too much content in one web page is not advisable; you should split it into several web pages instead. The content should be free of grammatical and spelling errors and should logically flow.
7. The web site should function well.
Before you inform clients of your website you should check its functionality on all web browsers. All the links should work well and the pages should have simple menus on where to click.
8. Decide on the right resolution.
Using a resolution of 800×600 is a good idea though you can decide to use JavaScript to automatically resize the user’s window.
Finally you can use templates (offered by Template monster) or decide to incorporate professional assistance such as LogoWorks.
