Posts Tagged ‘rules of thumb’
September 8th, 2009 | 
Author: When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.
1) Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.
2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
3) Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!
5) Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.
Learn about 16th birthday ideas, 16th birthday presents and other information at the Knowledge Galaxy site.
Article Source: Website Design: What to Do and What to Avoid
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.
1) Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.
2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
3) Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!
5) Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.
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Article Source: The Most Important Things In Your Website Design
Create Your Website with Care
Although website design is a constantly evolving art, there are still some general rules to live by in order for you to design a successful income earning website. Most visitors will only have your website with which to make a judgment of you and the products or services that your website has to offer them, you must remember that you only have about 2 minutes to make a strong positive first impression on the people who are visiting your money making website. If you cannot keep your visitors attention and keep them on your site you will not earn any income from your Google AdSense ads. You must remember to pay attention to every detail whether big or small, even the little details can be noticed by your visitors and can show them your commitment, or lack of commitment, to professionalism when it comes providing a high quality website. I would suggest practice viewing your website pages through a neutral point of view or even get a second point of view after you have done some work on the site. You want to ensure your visitors a positive experience when visiting your site so that they will value your site and continue to return in the future. The following are six important rules of thumb to get you started on the road to success as a webmaster.
1) Avoid Using Splash Pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website and for many visitors they may be the last thing. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”, unfortunately many visitors do not like splash pages and in fact some studies have shown that as many as 25% of the traffic to a website will leave right after encountering a splash page, this can have a detrimental effect to the amount of traffic that actually see your Adsense ads or affiliate products that you may be selling. It’s as simple as this, if you have 25% of your traffic leaving before seeing your ads, services or products you are losing out on 25% of your potential income. In Addition, search engines cannot properly optimize flash pages as there is virtually no information for them to go on. This will prevent your website from appearing in searches done by search engines such as Google, AOL, and MSN. These are where you will get most of your traffic from and if you can’t get listed because of a splash page you again are missing out on revenue sources, and search engines are probably your biggest source.
2). Provide Easy Navigation
You may be thinking to yourself right now that designing a website that is easy to navigate is not rocket science and not one of your main concerns. It is easy to design a site that you find is easy to navigate around, however, more often than not, what makes sense to you, the creator of the website, is not so easy to follow for the first time visitor. It is important to ensure that your navigation buttons are easy to locate and the title of its function should be easy to understand. You want gain maximum exposure to your AdSense ads, your services, or your products and by giving your visitors the easiest and understandable methods to navigate between your site pages is one way to do this. For instance, when you want traffic to go to a purchase page for products and goods, you want to name the button “Buy Now”. This guarantees that the traffic on your site knows exactly where they are going and what they will find there. In general, people are not very patient with being misdirected from navigational buttons and if they click on a specific button and end up being directed somewhere else, frustration arises and leaving your site may be the end and costly result. You want to avoid mislabeling these tools so as to keep people on your site and viewing your ads and products as well as to encourage them to return in the future. Remember, return visitors can equal more money making opportunities for you.
3). Avoid Flash Page Frustration
As mentioned with using the correct navigational buttons and tools on your website, flash graphics pages are great if you want to get in a message here or there, but in general, they are a stop sign in the middle of the road. Website traffic is crucial to a successful site, so, as a rule, you do not want to irritate the traffic by using flash pages with graphics on your site. Remember, the more traffic and the longer it stays, the more clicks for your AdSense ads that you have and more opportunities to sell your affiliate products or services. However, if you decide to initiate this method of website design, make sure that your visitor can ‘x’ out or close the flash page to move forward. This option will at least help keep them around a little longer.
4) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
In general, even people that are the least internet savvy have trained themselves to disregard banner advertisements as they are annoying. How many times have you looked at a banner ad and simply ignored it? Another route you can travel down would be to provide content that is more beneficial to your traffic and intertwine affiliate links into your website. This allows for your visitors to feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed into buying. Remember that you want to be able to control the validity of your site by providing all of the correct content that is going to benefit you. Having banner ads from unrepeatable companies or websites on your site can tarnish the reputation and value of your websites and eventually cost you traffic and revenue that you could be earning from your Adsense ads and affiliate products.
5) Remind the User Where They Are
Once a user clicks into a site section, it is a good idea to remind them of where they are, keep them interested in the subject or subjects that are provided on the page so that they will stay and possibly earn you money. Make sure that you use a consistent method to highlight the section a visitor is in, such as a change in color or appearance. If your website has more than one page per section, be sure to leave the button clickable so your traffic can use it to get back to the main page of that area.
6) Avoid using audio on your site
If you plan to use any type of audio on your website I highly suggest that you provide audio controls so that the audio can be muted, most visitors get easily annoyed by hearing the same audio track over and over, whether it is a voice, music or sound. I believe there is no quicker way to chase away a visitor than having audio on your site, so avoid it if at all possible.
As you can see, there are quite a few tips outlined in this article and by using these tips, you will be able to see the benefits through the increase in profits from the use of your Google AdSense ads, other ad programs or your affiliate sales.
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Article Source: Good Website Design: Five Rules You Should Follow!
A business owner could save up to 89 percent of the cost of a fax machine by just using an Internet fax services supplier. The other advantages of employing a service such as this also means that your confidentiality levels are greatly improved and also you can simplify the way in which control and management of all written documents you produce is carried out.
But, as you will find, many companies presently offer fax facilities. So, of these, which should you decide to use? Below we provide a few rules of thumb which will hopefully help you to make the right decision when choosing the internet fax facility supplier for your business.
Be sure you can have faxes that are sent to you in email or by logging in to an online account. The use of this service is not permitted by all companies, but if you are ever likely to be away from your usual place of work, the lack of immediate access to essential fax transmissions from clients or suppliers could cost you clients and revenue.
There are sometimes hidden costs that you must look for so that you don’t end up paying for something unexpected. Unfortunately, you will be charged if you go over the assigned amount of faxes you send or receive when dealing with some companies offering a free fax facility. Most often, parties such as these cost more in the end than a company that offers you a set rate for the faxes sent and received. Regrettably, when you send a fax you will pay for the ones that don’t go through in addition to the one they ultimately get sent for you.
One other thing that you should be looking at closely when considering utilizing any kind of internet fax facility provider is the format in which the written documents will be sent to you. Ordinarily most providers send your faxes as TIFF attachments even though numerous people do not have the ability to open such papers on their local machines. It’s important to learn a company that can transmit faxes to you in assorted formats which work with the software you already have on your machine.
If you keep the above pointers in mind when searching for an internet fax service supplier you should be able to find one who meets your special needs and needs perfectly.
To find out exactly how you can get Internet Fax Broadcast visit my How To Send Fax Via Internet website.
Article Source: The Right Internet Fax Facility Supplier For Your Business
A business owner could save up to 89% of the cost of a fax machine by just utilizing an Internet fax facilities provider. There are many benefits of these services, two of which are improved privacy and easier control and management of written documents.
Many companies now offer the opportunity to use their fax services. So, which one of the choices should you in reality use? Below we provide a few rules of thumb which will hopefully assist you to make the right decision when choosing the internet fax service provider for your business.
Foremost, be sure to obtain the capacity to get faxes through e-mail or the means to log into an account to amass them online. However, be wary of companies that don’t offer this service because not having access to an essential fax when you’re away from the office could cost you a client and therefore their income.
Secondly, you must always be particular to check all the costs on your statement for any hidden or unexpected costs. For many companies, going over a particular limit on the amount of faxes sent or received entails that you will be charged additionally – even if they are offering you a free service. Basically these types of business enterprises are more costly than if you use a business that has fixed prices for each fax that you send or get back. It’s possible that your facility provider will charge you for failed faxes, and some will even bill to have a failed fax sent again.
The format of written documents received is an essential issue when looking at any type of internet fax facility supplier. Usually most providers send your faxes as TIFF attachments even though many people do not have the ability to open such papers on their local machines. Hence if you can look for a company that will transmit these faxes to you in a variety of various data formats and which are compatible with the office tools you currently have installed on your machine.
Use the above pointers when thinking about internet fax service providers and you will be able to select one who perfectly meets your needs and prerequisites.
Visit us at Canon Internet Fax.
Article Source: Save As Much As 89% By Using An Internet Fax Provider
It isn’t hard to accidentally delete a file. It happens to the best of us. Fortunately, having a “recycle bin” makes the problem easy enough to undo. Most accidental deletes can be remedied by a simple “CTRL-Z”. However, “permanent” deletes are not as easily fixed. That’s when a file has also been cleared from the Recycle bin or was too large to fit in there in the first place. Once files are cleared from the recycle bin, it tells the computer that the space previously reserved to hold the information is now available.
Is there a way to get the file back? Usually yes. The file must still be: intact,in the directory, and unfragmented.
What does mean? Rather than going through the technicalities of how a hard drive works, let’s break it down into some rules of thumb.
Big files need more space to store. So the larger the file that got deleted, the more tempting it is for the computer to want to fill that space quickly with new information. If that happens, (we call it “overwriting”), you could be out of luck.
What can you do? There are many “undelete” utilities out there available for download. Most are relatively inexpensive and some are even free. However, beware of getting what you pay for. Do your research on the utility before you make a purchase and definitely before running it on the drive. Whatever you do, turn off the computer the moment you discovered your mistake and by no means should you ever download a utility onto the drive in question! In the process of downloading anything, you could overwrite the data you’re looking for!
A more reassuring method of undeleting files is to bring it to a data recovery lab.
Step 1 – turn off your computer and DO NOT TOUCH. The only thing you should at this point is to remove the hard drive from the computer so nobody turns it on by mistake. The boot process alone could overwrite the sectors.
Proper labs will have recovery equipment to scan your drive properly (and often find data even if it has been overwritten, although there’s a limit to how many times it can overwrite and still be found). Without the drive reader (which does nothing to change the state of the hard drive), there’s always a risk that anything you do will comprise the deleted data.
Police use this method for finding evidence (even though criminals think they’re ok by clearing it out of the recycle bin). To give your deleted files the greatest chance of being found, find someone with proper recovery equipment and use them.
Which method should you pick?
Obviously that depends on how much that data is worth to you. If its a matter of sitting down and re-writing a few paragraphs, then maybe risking losing it forever isn’t so bad. However, if these are precious memories or business critical data then having it done professionally is probably a better route.
Terri Chu is a technology consultant with Revival Technologies, a company which specializes in Data Recovery.
Article Source: How can I recover a file I accidentally deleted?
Business proprietors can save as much as 89 percent by utilizing an internet fax service provider instead of possessing their own fax machine. The other advantages of employing a service such as this also means that your confidentiality levels are greatly improved and also you can simplify the way in which control and management of all written documents you produce is carried out.
You will discover that there are now a myriad of companies who offer fax services. Which would you select from these options? Below, there are a few rules of thumb that can help with making the right choice of Internet fax service providers for your line of work.
The first thing you should be doing is determining that you are able to receive any faxes that are sent to you either by getting an email or by you being able to log into an account and then collecting them online. Regrettably there are some companies that will not allow you this facility and certainly if you are in all probability to be away from your place of business at any time not being able to achieve access to that all important fax sent by a client or provider could end up costing you business and money.
There are many companies that provide Internet fax services for a small fee and it is a very helpful facility for moms that work from home. For numerous companies, going over a particular limit on the amount of faxes sent or received means that you will be charged extra – even if they are offering you a free service. Most often, companies such as these cost more in the end than a business that offers you a set rate for the faxes sent and received. You may even find that you can be billed for those faxes that fail to be transmitted and you then need to pay up not only for the failure but also for them to re-send it for you.
One other thing that you should be looking at closely when looking at using any kind of internet fax service supplier is the format in which the papers will be sent to you. Usually most providers send your faxes as TIFF attachments even though numerous people do not have the capability to open such written documents on their local machines. It’s important to find a company that can transmit faxes to you in various formats which work with the tools you already have on your machine.
If you keep the above guidelines in mind when searching for an internet fax service supplier you should be able to discover one who meets your special needs and needs perfectly.
You can visit: Fax Over Internet Protocol and How To Send Fax Over The Internet for more information.
Article Source: Will You Consider An Internet Fax Service Supplier?
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally and serves its purpose. Here is the first of ten important rules of thumb to make sure your website performs well.
Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. They became popular back in the days when most people were on a dial-up Internet connection, and visitors had a tendency to click away if the site took too long to load. The argument was that if the page loaded quickly, impatient visitors would be more likely to stick around. That may have been so in the past, but things have moved on since then.
Today, with fast connections becoming the norm this argument no longer holds true. Research as shown there are only a finite number of times a prospect is prepared to click links on your website – particularly if it’s a sales website – and that number is getting lower all the time. That extra click from your splash page to your main page, could mean the difference between a prospect clicking on the “buy now” or “go to checkout” link, or getting frustrated and clicking away.
It’s best to give visitors the value of your site up front without the splash page. If you have a long sales letter, try using CSS style sheets to make the page load faster.
In my opinion, you should especially avoid Flash splash pages. Even on a fast connection they can take ages to load. If you must use a Flash intro, give the visitor the option of skipping it.
Shaun Pearce is a video maker and webmaster. You can find out more about running a website at http://www.yourwebsiteacademy.com
Article Source: 10 Golden Rules in Website Design: Rule # 1
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally and serves its purpose. Here are the third and forth of ten important rules of thumb to make sure your website performs well.
Have a simple and clear navigation
Provide simple and straightforward navigation menus so that even a young child will know how to get round your site. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered drop down menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
If you have a multiple page site, a navigation menu at the side is the most common way of achieving this. Research has shown that having the navigation menu to the left of the screen is easier to use than having it on the right.
If you have a single page “mini site”, you still need to make it easy for visitors to find your Terms and Conditions or Contact Us pages. A navigation bar at the top of the page, or (more commonly) several lines of links at the bottom of the page, can accomplish this task quite easily.
Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at any given moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily.
If you have a side navigation menu, you can make the link to the page the visitor is already on a different color, or align it differently from all the rest. If you’re using symbols to mark each page, use a different symbol for the page being visited. Some web design software: Net Objects Fusion, for example, will do this automatically for you.
Each page on your site should also have a title relevant to its contents. For every page other than the sales page, having a headline that tells visitors what page they’re on is also a good idea.
Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!
Shaun Pearce is a video maker and webmaster. You can find out more about running a website at http://www.yourwebsiteacademy.com
Article Source: 10 Golden Rules in Website Design: Rules # 3 & 4
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally and serves its purpose. Here is the second of ten important rules of thumb to make sure your website performs well.
Do not use excessive banner advertisements
There’s nothing more off putting than being greeted by a wall of advertising banners when you enter a website. It practically screams “I only want you to visit my site so I can make money off of you”.
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements, so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into that content. Let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
You can do this a number of ways. For example, having a “for more information please visit…” box tied to an affiliate link is probably the simplest. That way, you’re doing visitors a favor and pointing them in the direction of something that can help. The fact that it might make you some money becomes a secondary issue.
Installing Google AdSense on your site is another. These small, classified ad. type advertisements offer visitors information based on keywords found on your website. Every time someone clicks on the ad., you get paid. They’re a good way to monetize non-sales websites – blogs, for example.
Shaun Pearce is a video maker and webmaster. You can find out more about running a website at http://www.yourwebsiteacademy.com
Article Source: 10 Golden Rules in Website Design: Rule # 2
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally and serves its purpose. Here is the fifth of ten important rules of thumb to make sure your website performs well.
Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on.
Peoples’ tastes in music vary, and what might sound like a pleasant melody to you, can be an annoying noise to someone else.
A couple of years ago, having an audio greeting to encourage people to stick around and read the sales letter or sign up for an eZine was all the rage. Every “guru” was plugging the idea. I split tested it on one of my websites and found conversion fell by a whopping 60% where I added the audio greeting. Needless to say, I dropped it right away!
If you insist on adding audio, make sure visitors have some control over it – volume or muting controls etc.
Video is a different matter, however. An embedded link from a video streaming site such as YouTube can really enhance your website. A picture is worth a thousand words, and if you can actively demonstrate something on your website, it can improve your visitor’s experience of your site.
As with audio, you should make sure the visitor has control over whether he or she watches the video. Do not set the video to play automatically, rather let your visitors click on the play link themselves.
Video testimonials can be a real inducement to purchase your product or service as prospects can see the testimonials are genuine and from “real people”. Go easy on the number of videos on your site, though, as too many can really slow your site’s loading speed.
Shaun Pearce is a video maker and webmaster. You can find out more about running a website at http://www.yourwebsiteacademy.com
Article Source: 10 Golden Rules in Website Design: Rule # 5
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally and serves its purpose. Here is the seventh of ten important rules of thumb to make sure your website performs well.
Know your audience
Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them.
What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but an astro physics graduate will find that site interesting.
Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to her second. In this way, the visitor will put her trust in you for offering the solution to her problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to her after that.
When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game using a boring website consisting of just plain black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site’s general theme.
Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.
Shaun Pearce is a video maker and webmaster. You can find out more about running a website at http://www.yourwebsiteacademy.com
Article Source: 10 Golden Rules in Website Design: Rule # 7
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally and serves its purpose. Here is the sixth of ten important rules of thumb to make sure your website performs well.
Have a way of capturing visitors’ names and e-mail addresses
There are two reasons why you should do this. First of all, it is very rare for people to buy from your site on their first visit. Often people will visit several sites offering similar products in very quick succession. They may become confused and get your site mixed up with someone else’s. A gentle reminder by e-mail is the simplest way to get them coming back.
The second reason is: it’s vital that you build up a mailing list if you want your website to be successful.
A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The old adage “the money is in the list” cannot be true enough – if you have a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you launch a new product, you will be able to save a lot of time and effort by marketing it to your existing list first.
You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For example, let’s take a look at a very good example – apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and e-mail form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via – guess where – iTunes!
A quick way of building a list is by having a “squeeze page” as the first page on your site. This is simple page where people have to sign up for a report before they can get any further into your site. Don’t confuse this with a “splash page” (see rule 1). You should ensure what you’re giving away is irresistible, otherwise visitors will just click away. Always give an assurance that you won’t send them spam or share their details with third parties – and mean it!
Shaun Pearce is a video maker and webmaster. You can find out more about running a website at http://www.yourwebsiteacademy.com
Article Source: 10 Golden Rules in Website Design: Rule # 6
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally and serves its purpose. Here is the penultimate of ten important rules of thumb to make sure your website performs well.
Don’t assume everyone has the same size monitor as you
If you’re into web design, or spend a lot of time at your computer, you may have invested in a large, flat screen monitor. It’s a worthwhile investment, but not everybody has one. That’s why it’s important your website can be read by all your visitors without them having to pan across to the left and right using the slider at the bottom of the frame.
I use Google Analytics to track my website visitors, and I’ve discovered that the majority of them have a screen setting of 1024×768; however, some have a screen size of only 800×600 while others have a massive 1768×992!
You need to make sure your site looks good to all your website visitors, not just the ones who have the same size monitor as you.
Sometimes you’ll notice a lot of websites – especially single page “mini sites” – have the content constrained in a table or frame in the center of view. This means the site looks pretty much the same to all web visitors. I find a width of 663 pixels works best. Fill in the remainder of the screen space with a solid color or a repeating graphic. Just make sure it doesn’t distract the visitor from the main message of your site.
Shaun Pearce is a video maker and webmaster. You can find out more about running a website at http://www.yourwebsiteacademy.com
Article Source: 10 Golden Rules in Website Design: Rule # 9
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally and serves its purpose. Here is the last of ten important rules of thumb to make sure your website performs well.
Make it easy for people to buy from your site
Convincing your prospects to purchase from your site is a difficult job, but you’ll make the process twice as hard if your prospects don’t know how to actually buy what you’re selling. No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects to purchase your products or services instead of your competitors’, they won’t buy if they find the process cumbersome. It would be a waste of everyone’s time if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect only to have something go wrong when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits!
First of all, check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. If you can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form, you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page or shopping cart from every page on your site. If you’re selling multiple products via a shopping cart, make sure the “go to checkout” button is in the same place on every page.
Do you offer multiple payment options? Some people feel comfortable paying via PayPal, While others won’t touch it. Some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a check or money order. Most online shoppers are comfortable paying by credit or debit card, but there are still people who don’t want to part with their credit card number online. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects’ desired payment method.
You will also want to prove you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into getting a SSL certificate for this. They used to be really expensive, but the price is coming down all the time.
A money back guarantee will make people will feel confident about buying from you. The best kind of guarantee is a results based one. If you guarantee your product or service will do what the customer wants (or their money back) you’re transferring all the risk from your customers’ shoulders to your own. If you use a third party payment processor – like ClickBank, PayPal, or 2Checkout.com, the customer has someone else to complain to if they want their money back and you don’t deliver. If you’re a reputable merchant, your customer will never need to use this facility, but just like the airbag in your car, it’s nice to have the extra reassurance of knowing it’s there just in case.
How about after sales support? Who do they contact if they have problems after purchasing – and how? Having a help desk so that customers can contact you or your support team after purchase will lessen the likelihood of customers fearing they are going to be stuck with a “lemon”. Telephone support, where possible, is also a good idea. If most of your customers are from the same country as you, consider having a toll-free or local call rate phone line. Alternatively, a voice over Internet system like Skype can enable customers from all over the world to contact you for free.
Customer testimonials add credibility, and you should actively solicit them from everyone who makes a purchase. Send them an e-mail after they’ve had enough time to use your product or service properly, and offer them a thank-you gift for their time.
Above all else, make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger on the other end of the Internet.
In conclusion, you want to make your visitor’s visit as painless and enjoyable as possible. If you follow these ten golden rules, build on them, and take them to the next level, you’ll come a long way towards achieving that.
Shaun Pearce is a video maker and webmaster. You can find out more about running a website at http://www.yourwebsiteacademy.com
Article Source: 10 Golden Rules in Website Design: Rule # 10