Published on August 12, 2013 Why Quality Matters in Web Design
A poor quality site will undermine both your products and your business. Your web shop visitors make assumptions about your products and services as soon as they get to your website. In a physical store, you have a few minutes to impress a customer. You can engage them in conversation or entice them with tangible things. But online you have only seconds to entice them. So you need to make those seconds count.
To secure more customers, more business and ultimately more sales for your online store, you should consider using a customised look and feel to give you a unique look that your returning customers remember.
Web Design and Branding
Brands
Your brand is more than your logo or business image, it’s the collection of many things that together define how your customers perceive your business and what they expect of it. Your brand includes everything from the top to bottom of your interaction between customers and your business:
- The associations that customers make when they hear your business name or see your logo
- Whether customers think of your business when they hear or see a reference to the type of products that you sell
- The quality of the products that you offer
- The quality of the service that you offer
- Physical interactions that customers have with the physical parts of your business: your letterhead, your logo, your website design, your business cards etc.
- Your product packaging
- etc.
Brands create associations in the minds of those that see them and engage their senses. As a seller, it’s important that you create positive associations about your business if you want to sell more of your products, encourage customers to leave you reviews and recommend your business to others. It can be hard to build a brand online as consumers are encouraged through advertising and societal message to shop offline and buy online, so when people are coming to your site, they might be looking for just one thing: the best price and right features for the product that they already want.
This means that you have to work hard to make your site and products attractive. And when you make a sale, blow them out of the water with your service so you build loyalty and get them coming back.
Information vs Online stores – differences in objectives
One thing to remember is that an online store and information based store will have different objectives. What is an information website? A site that isn’t a shop has a fundamentally different objective as a website compared to an online shop. An information website as it is called, is about portraying the business’s key contact information, its objectives, its reputation, its range or brands, in-depth analysis of features or benefits or support resources. The site navigation and layout may be designed to encourage leisurely reading and to create a compelling experience. Like a newspaper or publication, the objective is to provide the relevant information that the customer may be looking for and to build positive brand associations and recall for that business.
An information site may use extensive media like video or flash animation, interactive displays, downloadable sheets and lists, written content, interactive forums, tools, brand lists, price lists and other techniques to answer customers questions and encourage positive interactions. Product information may be provided but the cart and buying tools not provided.
An online shop by contrast exists to drive customers through the sales process and to convert their clicks into sales. Complicated and deep navigation will not work in a shop, nor will other elements that take a long time to load like graphics and animations, or content that can’t be found in search engines like text embedded into videos or graphics.
A successful online shop needs:
- A professional look to create an immediately positive first impression
- A look that reflects the nature of the business marketing strategy. If your business is all about getting down to business you might want products and add-to-cart buttons prominent on the home page. If your business is about the latest look, you might want some advertising graphics on the home page of your site that entice customers into a buying page.
- Clear navigation that makes it easy for customers to find products. This might be through product categories, a prominent search facility, or filters that allow customers to drill into your product range quickly and easily on their own terms.
- Easy to find information about the store policies. Buyers conditioned to poor experiences buying through auction sites might be a little wary that they’ll be stung on postage costs, or that your site isn’t fully secure. So giving customers those reassurances up-front is very important if you want to convince them to buy from you.
- Clear and easy to follow product information – not copied off the manufacturer’s website like everyone else.
- Attractive and enticing product photos. Pictures do help your product sell. Show as much of your product as is relevant. Don’t skimp on detail, especially if your product is complex.
- A clear, simple, efficient shopping cart that makes it easy for customers to sign up or in (as a guest or registered customer), buy their products, pay, and then check up on when they’ll get them.
Your website interface is part of your brand
Even a highly efficient website that has been professionally designed can be ruined by your desktop clipart and garish fonts used in the centre panel of your website. Would you put a big ugly sign on the front of your car, or let your toddler paint your house? Customers do form impressions early on about the quality of a website, and the business that’s behind it. Markets are getting more competitive, and if you want to survive as more than just a hobby seller on price then you need to show that you are serious about your business and its voice: your website. Let the temptation to use ugly fonts or clipart be part of your competitors websites and not yours. Make yours a success.
Summary Checklist for your website
- NO CLIPART
- NO UGLY FONTS OFF YOUR PC
- Professionally designed logo
- Professional graphics
- Complementary colour scheme through out your whole website (just like you want the colours to match through your house)
- High quality product photos that are not too small (or so large they take all day to load)
- Your own product descriptions
- Product specifications and filters
- Use size charts on product tabs if relevant
- Shipping and privacy policies are clear and easy to find
- Product categories are easy to find and make sense
- You write using your customer’s terminology and not yours
- Your prices are competitive, the brands you sell are right for your customers
- When you put yourself in the shoes of your customers, you would buy from yourself…..
High impact websites can turn store visitors into sales dollars, so if you want to be successful ensure your website has a highly professional website that reflects your store’s colours, the way you do business, your products, your service and when you are maintaining it that you maintain the highly professional standards that you set when you start out. In order to achieve those standards, many business owners decide to go with one of the top New York web design companies that are ready to meet all of their requirements. Careful planning and solid strategy will pay off in the end whether you’re a small home business or massive international corporation.
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