Archive for the ‘Site Design’ Category
A whole lot of flourishing websites depend on returning site visitors for a significant part of their traffic. Returning visitors tend to be less difficult to transform into paying clients due to the fact that the more regularly these people come back to a website, the greater trust they have in that website. The credibility issue is greatly enhanced; try to keep your current website visitors coming back to your website by doing the following:
Start a community forum, chatroom or even a shoutbox
When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you’re offering your visitors a place to express their views as well as share data with their friends – all of them are visitors of your website. Since discussions build up a sense of community it will also follow that your visitors can be motivated to return to your site almost religiously every day.
Begin a web log (blog)
Maintain a web-based journal – generally referred to as a blog – on your site and keep it up-to-date with latest news regarding your topic. People are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you submit fresh information frequently. You will also develop your own standing as you are proving to all of them that there’s also a real live individual behind the website.
Incorporate polls or perhaps surveys
Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should certainly think about adding to your site. They provide a fast way for visitors to voice their own opinions and to get included in your website. Make sure you publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep all of them interested in finding out what is new.
Include puzzles, polls and games
Just think of the number of office staff who procrastinate at the office every day, and it is possible for you to imagine how many people will keep going to your website if you provide really intriguing or addictive amusements. You can even hold competitions to honour the high score winner in order to keep individuals pursuing top honours.
Update often using fresh new content
Update your site frequently with fresh content to ensure that every time your visitors come back they will have something to learn on your site. This is the most broadly known and most successful approach to attracting returning site visitors, but this is actually also the least utilised one because of the tardiness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that has not changed for months, so maintain your site up-to-date using fresh ideas and articles.
When it comes to your web site, special consideration should be paid to each individual element to make sure it performs optimally and serves its objective. Here are five crucial rules of thumb to make sure your website works well.
Do not make use of splash pages
Splash pages are the initial pages you see whenever you go to a website. They normally have a stunning graphic with words such as “welcome” or perhaps “click here in order to enter”. In fact, they are simply attractive pictures without any genuine functionality. You should not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value associated with your site at the very start with no splash page.
Have a simple and crystal clear navigation system.
You need to provide an easy as well as extremely simple navigation selections so that even a young child will understand how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your site visitors do not know how to navigate your site, they are going to abandon your website for another.
Have a very clear indication of where the visitor is.
Whenever visitors are engrossed in browsing your website, you should make sure they know which section of the website they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any portion of the website easily. Do not confuse your site visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!
Do not use excessive banner advertisements.
Even the least informed people tend to automatically dismiss banner advertisements therefore you will be throwing away important website space. As an alternative, provide more valuable content and insert relevant affiliate links straight into this content and permit your visitors feel that they need to purchase instead of being pressed to purchase.
Stay away from having audio on the site.
If your targeted visitor is going to remain on your site, studying your content, you will need to make sure they are not irritated by some audio looping on and on in the background. If for some reason you insist on including audio tracks, make sure they have got some control over the sound track — a volume control or muting controls would do the trick.