Website Design from a Consumer's View

 There is a lot of talk about website design and I thought that I would share my

thoughts on design from a consumer point of view. Yes, I design websites, but I also

 do most of my shopping on-line. I definitely  have some likes and dislikes when I

 visit a website and I thought that  I would share them with you.  Again this is my

personal likes and  dislikes ~ but remember that I am  not alone.

 What I like to see and what a site must have to keep me around to do

 some shopping:

•     Your website must be easy to navigate ~ I don’t want to spend my time searching the site to find what I am looking for. I want to see an easy navigation system.

•      Not too cluttered ~ too many graphics, banners, or information in a haphazard style.  Put your banners and advertisement on a separate page. Keep them to a minimum on your home page. Remember why you want consumers on your site. Do you want to steer them to someone else’s site?

•      Easy to read ~ Keep the different font styles to no more than 3 throughout the entire site. Make sure that you can read the font against your background color, your font style is easy to read, and that the font size is a size that is comfortable for the consumer to read. I don’t like to strain to read a webpage.

•      Consistent throughout ~ graphics and style should be the same throughout your entire site. You should not have different graphics on each page. Consumers want to see consistency.

•       Do Not have music playing on your site ~ When I visit a website I do not want to hear music. I already have music playing and I will immediately leave a website that plays music on it.

•       Falling snowflakes ~ I find falling or trailing cursors irritating and will leave a site when I come across these. If you like these, put them on a personal site, but not on a business site.

•       Keep your navigation hierarchy to a minimum ~ I don’t like to have to click through several different pages just to find one of an item. Example:

•       Furniture

•       Outdoor Furniture

•       Benches

•       Iron Benches

•       Then you find a photo of one bench. There is nothing to look at on the first four links, but links. Think about how many times a consumer has to click on links before they get to see a photo of something that they may want to purchase. Will they stick around to click on several furniture links to find the one thing that they are looking for?

•      Contact information ~ make sure that your contact information is easily available. If the consumer has a question you want to make sure that they can easily email or call you.

•       Policies ~ make sure you spell out your policies including return, shipping, payment, guarantee, and privacy.

•       Keep your website content and graphics fresh. I don’t want to go out to a site in February or later and see Christmas graphics on the site. I would be hesitant to purchase something from this site.

Again, this is just my personal opinion. But I hope that I have given you some

 food for thought as far as what   a consumer is looking for in a website, and

 remember more and more of us are shopping on-line. There are  a lot of places

to shop on-line ~ make yours one that is comfortable to send time on.

If you have any questions or comments please send me an email and I will

be happy to answer them.

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