They say first impressions are everything. Being the initial observation of someone or something, first impressions do seem to have a lasting effect. In our present day, electronic commerce is essential for the survival of most businesses. With the online business world, every detail of a webpage is important for making a positive impression on the customer. Creating that positive experience has a big influence upon the user, often determining if they will purchase anything or become a frequent visitor. If the first impression is a good one they may even tell their friends and family about the website bringing even more potential customers. A quality website that allows users to navigate smoothly and easily find what they are looking for will allow any site to stand out above the ordinary.
Homepage
An intriguing yet tidy homepage can do wonders for captivating visitors. Having a good layout with enough variety to grab the interest of the user without yet without overdoing it can make all the difference. Visitors want to see something that shows them they will quickly find what they seek without wasting time doing a lot of searching and navigating. If a page is cluttered with distractions like too many targets, pictures, advertisements, it will typically make a bad first impression causing a negative reaction with most visitors. Often this will cause them to leave and never come back. They say the first 8 seconds are considered the best opportunity for winning someone over as a return visitor. Therefore the home page of any website must be outstanding.
Variety with Organization
Be sure to have a clean and organized landing page that clearly places the product or service for sale as the main focus. It is also important not to publish a half-baked home page. If visitors arrive and find it just does not have much to show in variety or answers to their concerns they will likely leave and never come back. A healthy balance is the key. Having enough variety combined with an organized layout is key to helping consumers find what they want and find it quickly. No one wants to spend extra time navigating around a cluttered site full of a lot of advertisements and information that has no connection to their interest.
Detail
Having a page with enough good info to grab the interest of the user without overdoing it is important. Add to that some of the finer details that are somewhat cryptic in nature. These are some of the items which make a page more attractive yet in a subtle way. Having a site with straight borders and everything aligned in a vertical or horizontal row makes it easier on the eyes. Again, we want to keep everything tidy without making it too formal to the point it becomes boring or systematic in nature. Also having bright attractive colors on every page throughout the website without making the pages look chaotic is essential. Good bright uniform colors will add to the attractiveness of any page. Never forget that implementing large, colorful, easy to read type for titles, headers and URL’s will make everything easier for visitors to quickly discover which direction to go for finding what they seek.
Content
When most visitors arrive at a webpage they begin scanning various items of interest reading only short sentences or headings in search of pieces of information they find interesting and related to their search. The easier everything is to read the better the impression your site will have on the visitor. The best approach is to have the content divided up into a series of blocks or short descriptions. This works best when each block represents a different category and has a URL attached leading the user to a different location within the website.
In our modern high-tech world, everyone wants fast results. Delivering a simple and effective method to help visitors quickly achieve the goal of finding what they want should be the mission of any web design agency.