How to keep your visitors hooked to your website

Your main aim while designing a website should be to hook visitors on your designed – friendly website. Besides knowing the standard design principles, one must also be aware of the practical methods involved in making the visitors stay on to the website as long as possible. The tips involved for keeping visitors on your website are as follows:

1) Cut the hype and be teachable:

These days there is a common practice of attracting visitors with impressive sales letter and web pages of hype being created with the sense of making things urgent and interesting. But do you think that the visitors will really get hooked to this steaming piles of hype?

A good designed website must provide informational content with little or no sales talks. Also, after informing them about the service, one must also teach them how to use the service. Just pure information will not be enough. You need to also guide them with a sense of teaching attitude. If the above two mentioned prints are fulfilled, you will then definitely not only attract visitors on to your website but will be successful in hooking them permanently.

2) Update your page:

Once the visitors reach your website, you can expect them to come again only with the intention of reading something new. Hence, you must update your page on a regular basis. In this way the same visitors would frequently like to come and visit your website to read something fresh.

3) Provide a blog to your website:

These days its common and preferable to have a blog added to your website. It’s a way to add more and more content for visitors. It’s the best way to build a community based website.

You will notice serious visitors regularly visiting your website. But just having a blog is not enough. You also need to see that your blog is maintained with good and new content.

4) Provide simple navigation facility:

In my experience, I have visited many website and I easily got lost. The main reason behind this was “poor navigation” facility being provided for the conceived website.
Navigation links should be provided through out the web pages. The navigation bar provided on the home page should be kept on all landing pages. By this way, the visitors will not get lost.

5) Have item pictures:

A picture speaks louder than words. You must provide product pictures on the website. Customers will prefer to see the picture of an item before they actually receive the product in hand.

6) Describe the item:

It is always recommended to give all the specification details of the product. Try to describe as much as possible. If you provide product features details and other information of the product, you will leave no soon for doubt in the minds of the customer, before they finally decide to purchase the product.

7) Explain the benefits of the product:

Many website owners are good at describing the product features. Example: Remote control switch, capable of switching on alternate current operated appliances, special relay contacts etc. People are less interested in the features and are more interested to know the various benefits that are involved in the product. In this case, people would highly appreciate if you describe benefits of a remote control by saying that you can switch on your electric bulb or a tube light with the help of this remote control switch. It becomes easy and interesting for a customer to learn the benefits of an item rather than putting a list of products technical features, in front of him.

8) Provide a secured website:

Well, you have kept all the above seven points in mind while designing a website. But yet, there are chances that in spite of following the above mentioned guide lines, you may fail to attract customers. It may happen that a major chunk of your visitors may not feel like buying through your website. This may happen if you don’t have a website which is secured. Hence, your website must incorporate trust building tools like verisign and BBB online. Make it bound and clear to your visitors and buyers that your website is secured.

I urge web designers to sincerely follow the above mentioned tips and thus see yourself being successful in hooking visitors and buyers on the concerned website.

How to create an impact on your website ( Part 2)

In the first part of this article, we have mentioned quite a few number of tips that can be used to enhance the impact of a website. These days we can be bombarded with all sorts of ready made website design package. However, we need to check by our self for improving the overall impact of the website. Keeping this point in mind, let us now continue to learn more tips which are as follows:

1) The text should be readable enough:
Here, I am trying to focus not on the type of words that you use but it is all about how the words appear on the page. Your words used must be surrounded with a lot of white space. When people read the content on your website, they should not strain their self by ducking their head to read the entire content. Also, see that you don’t use too much of dark backgrounds for your web pages as they make you feel as if you are limited to a small area and dark background pages look glooming and have a depressing effect on your mood. While using the text, see that the color of the text matches with the backgrounds. Certain colored background makes it difficult to read the text. You must keep one thing in mind that different browsers read colors differently. What looks great on your browser, could well be invisible on another. Hence, color of your text is very important.

2) Provide easy readable web pages:
Your web pages must be designed in such a way that the visitors can read them easily. This can be achieved by breaking it up into little “chunks”. You must provide vertical columns in order to divide the page vertically. You can also divide the webpage in the horizontal manner, by the use of headings and sub-headings. Also create a heading on each page by writing a short statement as a summary. Stick to one type of font for all your headings and sub-headings. You can also highlight the heading by making the whole sentence in bold.

3) Locate your navigation bar properly:
As per the western rule, people are accustomed to reading from left to right and from top to bottom. Also, people are accustomed to finding navigation bars on the left of web pages. It is highly recommendable to have a brief navigation bar along the bottom of the page. Use the navigation bar on every page so that your visitors can easily handle the web pages using the navigation bar.

4) Have a separate webpage for testimonials and private policy information:
For a business related website, it is essential to bring trust and confidence in the heart of the customers. You can achieve this by having a special page for policy and procedure. Also, in order to safeguard the customer’s interest, you must inform tem about how exactly you will protect their privacy. It is worth to have a separate page for mentioning these types of information in the visitor’s interest.

5) Use the right set of words:
This tip is the last tip in this article. However, it is the most important point that needs to keep track of. You must not commit any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. If you are wrong with regard to this fifth tip, then your efforts will go in vain, irrespective of whether you have achieved the first to the fourth tip as discussed in this article. Suppose a customer gets initially attracted by the appearance of your website but suddenly realizes that your website content is full of spelling mistakes, grammatical error and no proper punctuation marks used. The customer will never be impressed with such a situation. It will bring a bad effect on the person who owns the website. It will also indicate that the owner of the website appears to be careless, sloppy and unprofessional. If you cannot do it by yourself, you must then employ someone to write your webpage for you. written by Incite Software Pvt. Ltd.

How to create an impact on your website ( Part 1 )

Websites are increasing in numbers day by day. At present, there are more than 35 million websites available. So, with so much of competition, you must focus on how your website will stand unique from others. Here, web designers play an important role in making one’s website outstanding from others. It is essential to concentrate on certain techniques whereby your website will easily catch someone’s eye. Your website should get noticed by the visitors, by giving them a sense of attraction. This can only happen if you follow the below mentioned tips.

1) Use proper color combination and size:

If you want your web pages to be outstanding then in that case you must select the right scheme of 3 or 4 colors for your web pages. Do not use too many flashing lights, colors, graphics etc. since it will be a source of distraction. You can compare this situation to a musical store who play’s loud music resulting into high heart rate of the listener. Use a very bright color (yellow, red or blue etc.) along with a limited amount of dull colors (example: black, white or black and grey etc.) This will help the visitor to focus his view point on to those areas where the color is used. By this technique, your readers will easily move around the entire page.

2) Use 3D effects:

Your self created background webpage can have a lively feeling if you give your webpage a 3D look. You first make the background slightly blurred and place any clearly focused item on top of it. It will create a 3D effect. This is enough to give that extra punch for your website.

3) Convey your main aim of the website:

Whether you own a business related website or it may be just a personal webpage, you must be able to express your main idea of your website. If you want people to visit and achieve the benefit of your website, then you must give them a genuine and effective reason to make them stay on your website. Every visitor would like to know what the website can store for them. Your website must offer them good information, entertainment, advice, be able to help them on an issue and your website can also link them to useful sites. So, even if one of their above needs touch their heart, they will be on your website for a longer time and they would always love to visit your website for more number of times.

4) Your home page should load quickly:

The downloading speed of any website is very important for keeping the visitorshooked to your website. At least try to ensure that your home page loads as quick as possible. Otherwise, if your homepage takes time to load, the visitor will skip to another website, irrespective whether your content on the webpage is good or not.Do not use too much of graphics on your web pages since they eat up the loading time of your website.

5) Take care while using graphics:

Your home page can become attractive if you use graphics. You must use graphics according to the type of the website. Example: If your website is a business oriented one, you cannot use cartoons on your home page. However, if you have a game related website, then using cartoon would be the best option as part of the image. Take the effect into consideration while creating an image and also choose an appropriate color.

A graphic which has a directional aspect should be fixed in order to point the eye towards the most important section of the page. If you use an image of a bird on the top left corner of your page, see that the bird is facing inward. In other words, its beak should be focusing towards the centre of the page and not away from it. Also, keep your navigation bars down the left side of your page. This method will help to constantly keep the navigation bars within the visitors field of vision.

Common mistakes which ca be avoided in website designing ( Part -2 )

I already made you aware of the fact that just designing a website technically is not sufficient. You need to attract your visitors and turn them into customers by designing a website from the visitors and customers point of view. In the second part of this article, I now continue to highlight further mistakes which we tend to do while designing a website. They are as follows:

1) Avoid poor quality content:

Poor quality website content should not be tolerated. Your visitors will stick on to your website only if they get what they want. You must provide them with the right information and also give them good information of the product and all valuable details of the product. In other words, the content of your website should be of good quality. Do not go for just general description of a product.

2) The content of the website should be easily readable:

I have come across a website which contains heavily patterned background or lots of colors. Please avoid such ways. It might appear pretty to you but people will have to strain their eyes while trying to read the content on the website. If this happens, your visitors will run away. For example: You cannot expect your visitors to read a light blue text on a purple background. If visitors visit such a website, they may then hardly read it. On the other hand, they will immediately hunt for another website.

3) Navigation concept should be kept simple:

Never underestimate a navigation bar on your web page. If you make it the wrong way, you will land up confusing the visitors. Do not use a navigation bar only for the home page. Keep navigation consistent through out the site. You can do this by keeping the navigation bar on all landing pages so that the visitors do not have to hunt for it. Make sure that the navigation links are large and clearly labeled.

4) Do not understand grammar:

Your website is overall attractive but the content of your webpage has grammatical errors. Do you think your visitors will like this? Most of the visitors will not tolerate grammatical mistakes on your website. They will draw a conclusion that if your text on the website is not handled well then there might as well be other aspects of your business which might be off targeted and may not be handled well by you. So, these types of conclusions brought in the minds of the visitors will certainly keep them away from your website. You must give importance to your grammar content writing on your website. This includes spelling and punctuation too.

5) Do not use wrong title tag:

Your webpage title is important and you should design it properly. Most search engines give importance on the content of your title tag. If you set your web pages title to something totally unrelated to your website then your webpage will not benefit from potential search engine ranking. For example: If a web page has a title simply as “welcome” or “Thank you for visiting” then in that case, it will not help in claiming a good search engine ranking. Your title tag must reflect what your website is about.

Common mistakes which can be avoided in website designing ( Part – 1)

A website can be considered as an information system which mainly depends on two major components called front end and back end. The front end components are made up of page layout, user interface, graphics, text and audio. The back end can be referred to the efficiency of the source code and the way it is organized. Also, invisible scripted functions and the server –side components that process the output from the front – end are important back end components. A web master individual takes the responsibility of handling the web development project. However, besides being aware of the key components of a website and even though we have responsible people to design the website, yet we must be aware of certain common mistakes that we ten to do during website designing and should avoid doing it. This article is not about how you design your website but this article will assist you to avoid many common mistakes that a novice and also an expert design may tend to make. The important points to be taken into consideration are as follows:

1) Your home page should touch the heart of the visitors:

The most important point while designing your website is to pay attention to the home page. Your home page should not look gloomy or it should not contain fonts which are tiny in size and are not matching with the background page of the website.

You must understand that your home page is the most important part of your website. Customers will judge your work on the basis of what they feel while visiting your home page. Your home page can be easily compared to the cover of a book. If the visitor is impressed with the cover of your book, he will then make an attempt to open and read the book further. In the same way if the visitor is impressed with your home page, he will then make an attempt to read other web pages of your website. If the visitor is not happy with your home page, you will then not see him reading your remaining web pages, however attractive and informative they may be.

2) Your product displayed on the website should be presentable:

Since the visitor gets attracted to your home page, he further decides to read other web pages containing information of a particular product that he may be interested. The visitor now thinks of purchasing a book through your website but he notices that the book displayed was poorly designed and he also did not like the way it was written. In such a case, would the visitor still buy it? So, even if the visitor has visited your webpage since they were interested in what you had to offer, yet it does not mean that the visitor will surely buy the product. Besides your homepage, you must also have a good product designed website which your customer will find attractive and will stay there with a positive purchasing attitude.

3) The website should download quickly:

It is known of the fact that normally visitors only wait for about six to eight seconds for a site to download. If this does not happen, he will then skip on to some other website.

So, even if your product is good but if your webpage takes time to download the entire picture and the information of the product, he will not wait for a long time. Even if a page takes 30 seconds, he may not like it. Instead, he will loose his patience and switch on to some other website which can serve his true purpose. Also, avoid too much of graphic oriented web pages which take time to download.