Yearly Archives: 2007

Small Business, User Experience, Website Design

27 Simple Ways to Build Trust in Your Website

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Building trust online isn’t achieved by any one single action. Trust is achieved by doing many little things correctly throughout your website. When combined, these will give your visitors a sense of trust, honesty, and stability. The good news is it is easy to create and build trust in your online visitors.

Few business owners focus on building trust in the minds of their visitors. When done well, the trust you build becomes a sustainable competitive advantage.

  1. Make a good first impression with the design of your site. Having a site that looks professional says a whole lot about your company.
  2. Create simple and intuitive navigation. If visitors are not able to find what they are looking for easily, doubt will begin to form about your ability to provide what they want.
  3. Give your website a voice that is consistent with your company’s brand. Make sure to use language that is audience appropriate.
  4. Make it easy for your visitors to contact you. Provide an email form, telephone number, and address of the company.
  5. Answer any incoming emails promptly. Try and answer all emails within 24 hours no more than 48 hours after receiving.
  6. Continue to add content and update your site regularly. This shows that your website is active and a focal point for your business.
  7. Make a routine to check all your website links. Broken links will cause doubts to quickly form in your visitors’ minds.
  8. Spelling and the correct use grammar matter. Typos create the impression of sloppiness and carelessness.
  9. Do not make outrageous claims. Your visitors are too smart and will associate your website with those of the get-rich schemes.
  10. Do not fake your testimonials. Publish real testimonials and always use real names and link to websites where possible.
  11. Write your ‘About Us’ page to be personal and comprehensive. It is important to make visitors feel comfortable and show the real people behind the site.
  12. Add your picture and the pictures of any key people involved with your company. This reinforces the fact that there are real people behind the site.
  13. Carefully consider any advertising you display on your site. If your website is anything but a blog, I strongly discourage any use of advertising.
  14. If you are conducting any transactions over your website make sure you publish a security policy. Clearly indicate what measures you take to ensure that all transactions are secure.
  15. If you offer a guarantee make sure it highly visible. If you don’t offer a guarantee I’d suggest you offering one, making it a 100% money-back guarantee if possible.
  16. If you display pricing keep your prices up to date, and honor those prices. If unexpected costs do arise, a customer will be much more likely to accept them if a foundation of trust is built.
  17. Do not hide charges from your visitors. Make sure they know what to expect in terms of shipping and handling charges.
  18. Make your refund and returns policy visible. Do not bury it, use it as a competitive advantage.
  19. Use the trust of big brand names and companies to piggyback off of. For example if you use PayPal, put the PayPal logo on your site.
  20. Become a member of well-known industry associations for your subject, join up and put their logos on your site. Join your local area Chamber of Commerce and put their logo on your website.
  21. Allow visitors to add comments to your articles. Openness and the exchange of views build community and a sense of involvement.
  22. If you accept credit cards put images of the credit cards you accept on every page of the order process.
  23. Clearly indicate ‘secure website’ whenever you try to get any information from visitors, including newsletter sign-ups, forum input and payment.
  24. Offer a low-cost, entry-level option when selling a service such as a subscription. This could be a one-day, one week or a month trial offer.
  25. If you do offer a trial make it extremely easy to cancel the offer. Do not try and trap your visitors.
  26. Use a high level of security when processing credit cards. Make your visitors aware of all the steps you are taking.
  27. Only ask your visitors for information that you really need. For example, for an email newsletter sign-up, only ask for an email address, nothing else is necessary.

Building and gaining trust with your visitors mostly comes down to common sense and good business practices. You can never do too much to build trust. Continually learn what makes a site trustworthy or untrustworthy and implement the relevant changes to your site.

Small Business, Usability, User Experience, Website Design

Quick Fixes to Simplify Your Website

Simple website design focuses on a visitor experiences your company’s website. By creating a goal oriented website you will get your visitors to the information they want quickly and easily.

Listed below is a short list of simple fixes to increase the clarity and ease of use for your company’s website.

  • Gather only task critical information. Asking for information that you don’t immediately need, even if the fields are optional, will make the form look at a long and decrease completion rates.
  • Don’t ask for information that won’t use. Example: Fax numbers – Seriously, when was the last time you actually faxed anything?
  • Use bullet points to clarify information and facilitate the visitors’ inclination to scan.
  • Create clear and understandable links – leave the marketing fluff at home.
  • Simplify your checkout process. Your visitors have close to a decade of online experience they don’t need an explanation of how to pay online.
Design, Usability, User Experience, Website Design

15 Tips for a More User Friendly Website

Visitors tend to only scan your website’s rather than spending a large amount of time thoroughly understanding the site. As such it is of utmost importance to make your message and options clear. Failing to do so will leave your visitors lost, confused and frustrated. Any of these options will end the same way – a missed opportunity and little chance of a repeat visit.

15 simple tips for a more usable website

  1. The home page should clearly tell your visitor what the site is about
  2. Make sure each page of your website has purpose
  3. Organize content so that headings are in hierarchical order to give clear structure to the copy.
  4. Don’t make your visitors guess about your navigation make the links obvious
  5. Use consistent and meaningful terminology for navigation items and hypertext links (read loose the “cutesy names”)
  6. Restrict the navigation bar to a manageable number of links or buttons
  7. Clearly indicate what your next steps are for your visitors
  8. Remove any clutter that may distract your visitor from the appropriate next steps
  9. Don’t change interactions through-out your site stick with what works
  10. Make it easy to find information such as contact details, pricing and delivery charges
  11. Contently review your site for errors that will make your site look unprofessional
  12. Make sure you text is large enough to be readable (at least 10px, 72% or .75em)
  13. Use a font easily read online (Verdana, Georgia, Arial or Times New Roman ) for your body text
  14. Do not underline any text that is not a link
  15. Include ample white space in the page layout

The more user friendly your website is, the greater the chance of converting your visitor into either a prospect, customer or both.

Design, Logo Design, Small Business, Website Design

9 Benefits of Taking Design Seriously

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Taking design seriously can help your small business stand out and be memorable when the competition for your customers attention is ever increasing.

“Business people need to develop a better understanding of design, form partnerships between themselves and creativity, and apply strategy to design thinking, in order to compete effectively today.” -Fast Company

9 Benefits of Quality Design

  • Create a good first impression
  • Quickly illustrate the quality of your company, products and/or services
  • Gain instant credibility
  • Establish a level of trust between your company and customers
  • Simplify communication
  • Increase usability
  • Increase customer engagement
  • Differentiate your company from your competition
  • Increase readability, scan-ability and legibility

Having a well designed branding materials, such as your website and logo tell your customers a lot about your company, your products or your services. A good designer can make a tremendous difference to your company’s image as well as your overall business.

How do you view design?

User Experience, Website Design

User Interface Research

I came across this interesting class project for the Advanced Interface Design Class at the Art Institute of Atlanta.

The ten question survey collects your answers and then shows the cumulative results for over 30,000 other users who have also went through and answered these questions. The stated goal of studying design elements is to help “build better websites.” The data is interesting but personally, I’m not sure of the value.

Try it yourself.

Bridge Experience, News

The Diluted Thanksgiving Experience

Thanksgiving has come and gone and I wonder if anyone really noticed?

Halloween generates a fair amount of buzz as does Christmas but sandwiched in between those two is a holiday that anymore seems to be just a pass-through day to the “real” holiday, Black Friday. Thanksgiving, the day before Black Friday, Black Friday Eve.

The most recent sales figures seem to emphasize this thought:

  • Online spending was up 29% ($272 million) Thanksgiving Day and up 22% ($531 million) on Black Friday
  • comScore expects Cyber Monday sales be even stronger than Black Friday’s and to exceed $700 million
  • ShopperTrak RCT Corp., stated total sales rose 8.3% to about $10.3 billion on Friday

Headlines in the media are all about Black Friday:

  • Midnight shopping lures Black Friday hordes CNN
  • Stores Lure Shoppers Before Black Friday Forbes
  • Black Friday carries retailers’ hopes for profitable holidays San Fransisco Chronicle

What happened to the experience of gathering together on Thanksgiving, eating turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, watching football and giving thanks for what is truly meaningful?

Random

7 Ways Besides SEO to Gain Website Traffic

Today, having a website for your business is an important (maybe the most important) piece of your marketing plan, both online and off. Over ninety percent of large businesses and forty percent of small businesses have a site. However, just having a site doesn’t guarantee success.

7 Ways to Gain Website Traffic

  1. Your Employees:Your website has to be on the top of everyone’s mind throughout your organization. Directing everyday inquiries to the website is the first step in gaining more usage to your website.
  2. Voice Mail: Use your “on hold” message to direct people to your website. This is extremely important when a user calls after hours or on weekends when you are running with a slimmed down, or no, staff. Ask all your employees to mention the website in their personal message also.
  3. Press Releases: Send out a traditional press release after your site is launched and then periodically throughout the year on new site features and/or services to continue generating awareness.
  4. Magazines and/or Newspapers: Submit articles to your local magazines and newspapers to get the word out about your website.
  5. Advertisements in Trade Publications: If the audience you are trying to reach is more business to business run ads in market specific trade publications
  6. Email Communications: Requesting all employees list the website address in their email signature will help keep the word out about the website as well as develop a stronger brand.
  7. Awards: Submit your website for various awards. There are numerous sites that make it easy for you to submit your website. With a little luck winning an award will enable you to generate more press opportunities.

If your website is going unused and unnoticed the amount of effort you’ve spent on determining the site goals, designing the site, planning the navigation and usability, etc. is going to be wasted.

Contact Small Farm Design to help develop a website promotion plan.

Design, Small Business

Why Design is Important for Small Business

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Simply put, design is a means for your business to communicate its value in a way that stands out and grabs peoples’ attention.

“I believe that in a crowded marketplace, design is the most potent tool for differentiating one’s products or services.” Tom Peters, Management Consultant

Your company is not alone. You have competitors, we all do. Design will help you deliver a message that differentiates your products or services from your competitors.

Perception is ultimately reality and you must show your value immediately to your customers. The effort placed into creating the design of your website, logo, business cards, etc. will be seen as soon as your customer interacts with anyone of these. This initial impression with your company will begin to formulate your customers perceived value of your company, products and/or services.

The primary purpose of design is to deliver a message. Whether you message is buy more widgets, or call to schedule an appointment, design puts organization and order into that message so that it is delivered to your customers in a way that makes sense, and is appealing to them.

Design plays a critical role in making information easy to understand and use. Anything from a website that makes ordering a pair of shoes easy to a business card that clearly indicates who you are and how best to contact you, good design streamline this process.

So, you can see design is important for your business. Design is how customers see your company. Perception is reality.

Small Business, Website Design

Does My Small Business Need a Website

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Why does my business really need a website? My customers are all local I don’t see the value in a website. How can it possibly help me?

This is a common question that comes up time and time again for many small business owners who have only local customers. Instead of asking if you need a website ask yourself “Would my business benefit from exposure 24-hours 7 days a week, 365 days a year?” The answer should now be a little clearer. No other medium allows you to expose all the benefits of your small business to your target market at their convenience and provide a source of direct communications from them to you?

Any business that is currently in the yellow pages should also be online. And any business that isn’t currently in the yellow pages should consider going online first before the yellow pages. The internet is where your customers expect to find you. The internet is where your customers are.

Having a website allows your potential customers to gather the information they need from their own computer monitors. Are there questions your potential customers ask daily? Are there typical items that help sell your products or services, a list of features, or a bulleted list of services? This is the information that needs to be available 24/7 on your site.

Customers prefer to gather information anonymously. They simply like to gather information before they put themselves in a position where they’ll likely be asked to answer questions. The majority of your customers prefer to know what they’re coming to buy before they walk in your door and will appreciate an informative site that functions as an expert salesperson during all those hours you’re not open for business.

Think about how many times you have used a search engine within the past week to research a product or service that you were considering purchasing. The benefits of a website are innumerable.