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 spend time on.

If you have any questions or comments please send me an email and I will be happy to answer them.

Copyright © 2007 — Nancie Dumdi — All Rights Reserved