eCommerce Design Advice

By Deborah Whitman

Creating a business website can be a major investment of time, money or both. How do you make sure that you get the most out of that investment?

Here are six pieces of essential design advice for making your website work harder for you. They are derived from looking at hundreds of small-business websites and talking to several designers who work with smaller businesses.

• Cleanliness is next to godliness.
  Too many small businesses are enamoured with speckled backgrounds, unreadable type fonts and a bewildering gaggle of buttons and animated gizmos running across their websites. Resist the temptation. A simple, clean design will do a better job for you than a site that looks like a flashing slot machine. You don't see the big guys like Amazon or Yahoo using pink marble or shadowy logos for their site backdrop. There is a reason for that. The background can quickly get in the way of the site itself, so the best advice is to keep it simple. Catch them in the first 10 seconds. Your front page needs to be designed to be both a stop sign and a fast, effective messenger. In two to three seconds the person should know exactly what the site is about or what the business does. Determine what image and message you want the customer to "get" in those first few seconds, and design your website's front page with that objective in mind. A short mission statement, or a summary of what your business does can be very helpful.
   
• The first page should load FAST.
  If you want to catch them in the first 10 seconds, your front page had better not take 20 seconds to reveal itself. Test it to be sure! Photographs are usually the culprits when pages load too slowly. Many small businesses scan photos for their websites, but you need to compress photo images so they are small enough to load quickly. You can reduce file size by removing some colour information from your photo and reducing the quality of the image. It's a balancing act to remove enough information so the photo loads quickly but not so much that the image look like an amateur pointillist painting. It is more art than science; a good designer often gets better results than a novice.
   
• A navigation system that a 6-year-old can master.
  Make it extremely easy for people to find their way around your site. On the Web, the system that helps you find your way around a site is known as its navigational elements. The navigation system should be designed so that a young child can master it. Website navigation is easiest to find if it's on the left side of the screen. Since some surfers still turn off graphics, you need to provide text-based navigation, as well. Most sites do this at the bottom of each page.
   
• Update your website regularly.
  Bring people back to your site by providing important or difficult-to-find information. The one caution here is that you must keep information up-to-date. Recently, I visited a restaurant's website where the front page proudly featured a special menu for New Year's Eve 1999. If you don't have time to keep it current, avoid time-sensitive information altogether.
   
• Hire professionals to design your website.
  If you can afford it, your site will deliver better results if you work with a designer and a professional photographer. Unless, of course, you were born with awesome design skills. When you work with a designer, provide them with a project brief outlining:
   
  • Goals for your website (e.g. sell goods online, provide information to convince people to choose your company, communicate to existing customers)
     
  • The type of image you want the site to create for your business
     
  • The reactions or emotions you want the site to evoke in potential customers (e.g. this guy seems like he really knows plumbing, or I'd like to visit this place it seems so restful)?
     
  • Who your current customers are and what they really like about your business
     
  • The size of your budget for this project
     
  • Examples of your current marketing materials (business cards, stationery, brochures)
     
  • A history of your business and why you have a passion and energy about this business
     
  • Keep these pieces of advice in mind when it's time to create your website or to give it a serious facelift