In this article, let’s discuss the best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules.
A website is a shop on the internet where you can put your products to sell. Unlike in the offline world, it remains open 24 hours a day, whether you are there or not. The next step is website design layout elements.
Website design layout elements
If you are a web designer yourself, then you can develop a website of your own. If not, get it developed by some expert in the field.
You have to take the utmost care while designing your website, or else you will fail in the online business. You need a simple, properly focused, easy-to-navigate, responsive, magnet-like, attracting visitors, converting, and highly trustworthy website for your online business.
Your site should be clean, informative, attractive, interactive, interesting, and engaging; it should also make money for you. It should gain the trust of your visitor so that he believes in you and makes a purchase from you. But most webmasters (site owners) ignore these factors, hence their failure in the online world.
Factors for designing a website: Principles, golden rules and guidelines for web design
1. Loading speed
You should design a website that is fast to load, taking at most 10–15 seconds to load in the browser. Truly speaking, the customers do not wait for more than 15 seconds for the site to open and move on to the next one if your site fails to load within this time duration.
Surely, to minimize the loading time of your website, you must reduce the size of your graphics. Also, do not use Flash, JavaScript, animation, or multimedia to a large extent.
According to a recent study, the average user waits only 10 seconds for a website to load. So, the current situation demands a simple, minimal, tidy, quick loading and clear design.
2. Good and original content
It is a well-established fact that good content is king and sells products successfully. It should convey the message you wish to communicate to your visitor. Is your site content written in such a way that it is compelling and motivating? Does it generate a sale?
Have others review, comment on, and edit your content to ensure they deliver the right message you are focused on. Check your spelling and grammar at least five times. Every time you read it, you may locate an error to correct it.
3. Personalise your website.
Design feedback forms and e-mail forms on your site so that visitors may ask you questions about your product that are not clear to them in the site’s content. This may increase your sales if the visitors get an immediate and satisfactory reply to their queries. Try to reply to all queries as soon as possible. Personalization may increase your sales dramatically.
4. Consistency of site
Your site must be regularly updated and highly beautiful in look, feel, and design. It should be pleasant to look at and not irritate the visitors, or else they will move on to the next site. Concentrate on the perfect colour combination on your site. In my opinion, web design is all about colour combination and techniques that catch user’s attention.
5. Navigation
Site navigation should be easy and simple. This makes visitors comfortable and uses the site easily. Put a text link called “site map” on your website leading to a web page displaying all the links on the website for the convenience of the visitors so that any link can be clicked from this web page.
The navigation aims to allow users to reach the webpage they are looking for. Hire a highly professional expert to design your website, if you can’t do it yourself.
Navigation is broadly studied under two headings:
Location Indicators
With the help of the location indicators, a visitor can know where he is on the site at the moment. A change of colour must be visible in the navigation.
If there is any confusion in navigating your site or understanding it, you are going to lose your customer and your chances of making a sale. Be crystal clear and careful regarding this, paying attention to the minute details. Take your customer as a newbie to the internet, and write and design your site accordingly.
Navigation controls
These are the links that users click to move around the site. These links should be placed in the same location on each web page, and the text constituting the link should reveal what the link is all about. Undoubtedly, this is a good SEO practice as well.
Vertical navigation Menu
Nowadays, a Vertical Navigation Menu is common and frequently used.
Hamburger Menu
Given that everyone is familiar with these options, the Hamburger Menu is a good candidate for an adaptable design on a mobile device.
It occupies a small space at the top of the graphical user interface as it is compressed one comprising three short horizontal lines only. The panels expand and show all links when clicked.
Based on user experience, using this menu has now become the norm. Mobile users find it simple to use. This menu is commonly known as the “hamburger menu” due to its appearance. It allows for a cleaner and more organized interface, making it easier for users to navigate through a website or app.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
6. Using images and info-graphics in web design layout
When designing the structure of your website, you need to make use of relevant images that are also of high quality, download quickly, and communicate meaning. Individuals are more likely to look at pictures than study written material.
Images and info-graphics capture the attention of the viewer, elicit an emotional response from them, and increase the likelihood that they will make a purchase. When selecting or developing your images, exercise caution to ensure that they do not appear to be advertisements. Instead, they should contain and communicate significant information to the viewer.
In the design structure of modern websites, large pictures are preferred on both the main page and the pages of a website that are dedicated to marketing products and services. A website’s ability to convert visitors into customers can be significantly aided by the utilization of high-resolution product images.
Customers appreciate an online experience that allows them to see all of the components of the products they are purchasing in high-resolution pictures. Providing detailed product images enhances the customer’s shopping experience. Furthermore, it helps to reduce the likelihood of returns or exchanges due to mismatched expectations.
It is important to strike a balance between showcasing the product and avoiding an overly promotional tone. Additionally, optimizing image size and format can improve website loading speed and the overall user experience.
7. Credibility is vital and a prerequisite.
No site, even if professionally designed and keeping all marketing criteria in view, will sell your products if your customers do not believe in you.
Provide your correct contact information, viz., your residential or mailing address, your phone number( preferably toll-free), and your e-mail ID on every page of your site and in the same location so that your customers can contact you before buying from you, thereby ensuring the authenticity of your site and building your online credibility and trust, which is a must for online business. You should also write a paragraph about yourself that describes “who you are”. Upload your photograph too, so that people will know about you.
Every page on your website should include a link to a clear privacy statement.
8. Call-to-action buttons
The buttons with links that direct users to act—preferably to make an order—are known as call-to-action buttons. These buttons are intended to catch the user’s eye, forcing them to click them. A website’s call-to-action buttons should be positioned carefully to improve user interaction and sales.
To elicit haste and motivate users to act, the button’s design, colour, and text displayed on it should be carefully selected. The button text must be clear so that users can understand what action is being taken.
The engagement rate of a website or application can be greatly increased by a well-designed call-to-action button.
9. Colour Scheme
A proper colour scheme or colour palette is necessary for a good website design. To make your website look decent and professional overall, you must use light colours in the right combinations. Avoid using fast colours because the user may get irritated.
The overall design should only use two or three colours at the most. The background colour you choose for your site must make the text completely visible and readable. To make the links stand out from the text, they should be created with different colours.
According to research, a website’s colour scheme can increase visitors’ trust. Additionally, it raises conversion rates by enticing and motivating him to take action. In fact, a website designed nicely is perceived by users differently which in turn helps in developing a brand value.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
10. Scalable Vector Graphics-SVG
SVG is a two-dimensional graphic language that is built on XML. Today’s web designers favour these because they are lightweight and quick to display. All current computer browsers are capable of displaying these images.
Since these graphics have few pixels, it is impossible to create high-definition photos or snapshots from them. Of course, these images work well for creating logos, maps, drawings, and other things. If you are dealing with pixels and transparency, the PNG picture file is preferable to SVG images.
SVG images, which are vector drawings, are perfect for responsive web design because they can be scaled to any height without compromising quality. PNG files, as opposed to SVG, have greater browser compatibility and are better suited for raster graphics.
11. Large white space
Nowadays, web designers prefer leaving a lot of white space or empty space on the website, especially on the Home Page, with little information so that users won’t be drawn away from the dense content. A few lines with large font sizes encourage the user to concentrate more on the content. Actually, the users find such sites well-designed and clean.
However, this does not generally apply to all websites. For example, e-commerce websites need to provide more information about products and services to encourage users to make purchases. Therefore, they may not follow the same design concept as other types of websites.
12. Typography
Typography is the art of positioning letters and text so that the viewer can easily see, read, understand, and find the content aesthetically attractive.
It includes font size, style, and structure to evoke particular feelings and communicate particular messages. In other words, typography makes the writing more legible and vibrant.
Typography is an essential aspect of graphic design, and it plays a crucial role in creating a brand’s identity and establishing its tone. In typography, we focus on font size, font height, line spacing, font colour, and length of lines.
The paragraphs are made short with short sentences, mostly in active voice, to enhance the readability of the content and make it more engaging for the audience. The font size should be appropriate, neither too big or too small.
Also, do not use more than two fonts on your site. Additionally, if possible buy your font to set your brand aside from the crowd.
13. Image Optimization
Image optimization in web design refers to the process of reducing the file size of images without compromising their quality to improve the performance and user experience of a website.
Large images can slow down the loading time of a website, which can be frustrating for users and negatively impact search engine rankings. By optimizing images, website owners can reduce the file size of images while maintaining their visual quality, resulting in faster page load times and a better user experience.
Several techniques can be used to optimize images for the web, including compressing images, reducing their dimensions, and using the appropriate file format (such as JPEG, PNG, or SVG) for each image. Additionally, using responsive images that can adapt to different screen sizes can also improve website performance on mobile devices.
14. SEO friendly design
Search engine-friendly website design refers to the design and development of websites that are optimized for search engines. The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to improve the visibility and ranking of a website in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Search engine-friendly websites are designed with several factors in mind, including:
1. Accessibility
Make your website accessible to search engine crawlers, allowing them to index and understand the content of the site.
2. Content
Use a high-quality, relevant content on your website that is optimized with keywords and structured in a way that makes it easy for search engines to understand.
3. Site architecture
Design your website with a clear and logical structure, making it easy for search engines to crawl and understand the site’s organization.
4. Speed
Optimize your images for fast load times, as slow loading speeds can negatively impact the user experience and search engine rankings.
5. Mobile responsiveness
Design your websites mobile-friendly, as more and more users are accessing the web through mobile devices.
By following these principles and designing websites with search engines in mind, website owners can improve their chances of ranking well in search engine results pages, driving more traffic to their site and ultimately increasing their business’s online visibility and success.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
15. Web accessibility
Website accessibility refers to the practice of designing and developing websites in a way that makes them accessible to people with disabilities, such as visual impairment, hearing impairment, mobility impairment, and cognitive impairment. This means ensuring that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the website content effectively, using assistive technologies such as screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, and assistive devices.
Website accessibility is important because it ensures that people with disabilities have equal access to information and services online, which is essential for their participation in society. Moreover, designing accessible websites benefits all users, not just those with disabilities, by making websites more usable, flexible, and adaptable to different devices and contexts.
Many web design practices contribute to website accessibility, such as providing alternative text for images, using proper heading structures, providing captions and transcripts for videos and audio files. Besides, using color contrast that is sufficient for people with low vision, and ensuring that website functionality can be accessed using keyboard-only navigation are among the accessibility options.
16. Focusing your site
Do not try to sell more than one product from the same web page. Instead, concentrate on the sales letter to motivate the customer for a single product on a single page. Of course, your goal should be to sell one product per page of your website, so use a separate page for each of your products.
You should never deceive your customer and sell quality products to build long-lasting credibility, which is the key to online success. Whatever your site promises, you should deliver- no cheating at all. You may make a few dollars out of cheating, but your business will never flourish, so take the utmost care and be honest and sincere in your approach.
17. Target your market:
Before building your site, you should know who your target market is. Your website should fulfill the needs of your customers. I prefer for all of your target markets, and your site to be clean and professionally designed and you need to deliver a quality product to build a good online business prestige.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
What is a usable site?
A usable site has good, relevant, and original content. The content should be easy and quick to find, and the website pages should be efficiently and cleanly designed and well organized, as already stressed.
A usable site will make it clear to the visitors what information or products are available and at what cost. If you are selling more than one product, you should put the costs of all the packages clearly on the main page, later keeping a separate web page for describing each of your products in full.
You should write and design your web page in such a manner as to make it easiest for the visitors to go through the site’s contents. Consider all of your visitors new to the internet and your website’s language and design. Make everything easier for the visitors to have easy access to your entire site.
Your site should be fully optimized, i.e., fast to load or open. Put the important information (benefits to the customer) on the top of the web page, which will load first in the browser. This information should capture the attention of the reader, making him eager to read further.
Website homepage design layout
Put links on the main page leading to particular information the visitors are interested in. No important information should be more than two clicks away from the main webpage. Some say three clicks; well, I do not agree. I prefer at most two clicks. To get even better results, keep the information one click away from the home page. Accordingly, design your website’s homepage. This has been tested and found to work well.
Do not over-design or over-navigate your site; instead, keep it at an optimum level. Similarly, do not under-design or under-navigate your site. Also, customers run away from the ugly-designed and ugly-navigated sites.
Your site should open in all types of browsers at all resolutions and should not distract from perfection, so test it properly as different customers may use different browsers and resolutions while surfing the net.
Choose the right designer for your website to include the latest trends in web graphics, but to a limited extent so that download time is not more than 15 seconds.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
Sales page: secrets to write it
1. While writing a sales page, you should keep the following criteria in mind to infuse a new life into it: Your sales page should convince people. This is crucial to generating sales and must be given full attention.
2. Write your sales page as if you are talking to a single person and not to a group, as one person at a time will read your website sales page.
3. Write your sales letter as if you are talking to a friend. Use simple language and do not use complicated English. Begin and end your sentences with any letter; there are no restrictions at all. People should understand your language and information without consulting a dictionary. Make it as easy as possible. According to an estimate, “ease of use” is the most tempting feature in any internet business.
4. Sit down and write your sales copy, whatever comes to mind. Edit it later; every time you come back after a gap, you will have fresh ideas to insert in your sales letter. Use your full potential in writing the sales copy, get it reviewed by some experts, and edit the copy as per the professional suggestions received.
5. Create interest in the visitor from the very first line of your web page to make people stay on your website.
6. Make your site sticky to attract visitors like a magnet. Always work on this. Your website’s design and layout should make people trust you as a professional company.
7. Explain your point by giving examples from the real world. People love this and understand better what you want to convey.
8. Use bulleted lists in your sales copy. Bulleted lists should explain the benefits of your product or service, not the features; please note that I am saying benefits and not the features of the product. People love and read the bulleted lists again and again. Put an additional space in between bullets and highlight each line to capture the reader’s attention. Put the bulleted list immediately after the opening lines in your sales copy.
9. Use short paragraphs consisting of at most 5 lines and at least a single line or only a few words. Short paragraphs work and keep the readers interested. Long sales copy works, but not long paragraphs. In fact, the long paragraphs make people tired and bored.
10. Write a sales letter about the benefits your customer will get rather than stressing the features of the product or service. Create the first impression to make people want to stay on your site. People care for themselves, not for you. In your product, you should clearly state what is for the customer.”You” and “your” words should be more frequently used than “I” and “mine”. Experts say a workable ratio is 4:1.
11. Concentrate on one product or service on one web page.
Please do not try to sell multiple products or services from the same page. You may sell other products or services as back-end products or on separate web pages.
12. There is much more competition for the same product, which is being sold by different sites on the internet. Now, how do you stay ahead in this marketing competition? For this, you should include sentences like. Our product is unique and superior to others; you won’t find it anywhere; it is altogether different; it is competitively priced; it will solve your problems; etc. on your sales page. This brings better results.
13. Create a sense of urgency among the visitors. Maintain a strong emphasis on your product’s or service’s low price and free bonuses. Your customer should think, “If I do not order immediately or within… hours, I may lose this opportunity of low cost and free bonuses”. Every sales copy should have a time limit. Experts say this leads to a dramatic increase in the number of sales.
14. Be sincere and honest in your approach.
Do not overstate, mislead, or hide the truth; if you do so, you may earn a bad reputation, and your online business will not last long. Instead, you should develop credibility and win over the hearts of your visitors, but only say the truth. People love and like honest people who disclose all the true details of their products or services before selling them.
15. Be exact and particular when you say something. For example, if your site is about money making and home jobs, do not say 200 ways to earn money, say 189 or 206 instead. By saying so, the customer thinks that he might have counted and that the information is precise. Therefore, this builds his trust in you, which may result in a sale.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
16. Your sales letter should clear up all the questions and doubts that may come up in the visitor’s mind.
When you complete writing your sales page, ask yourself, Why would I buy from this site? and see if the answer is there; if not, include it and make your sales page more perfect and complete in all respects. Leave nothing unanswered.
17. Make your paragraphs short. Making your headlines is an important task, and it may take even more time than writing the entire sales page. Use attention-grabbing headlines throughout your sales page, but do not overuse them. This keeps the interest of the readers, who move on deeper and deeper into your sales letter. Research says that sometimes a small change in the headlines of your site increases sales by 200%. So, focus on it and make the best headlines.
18. Use a break in proceedings like… (dots) in your sales letter. Starting the sentence in one line, leaving your reader in a state of trying to make out more, and concluding it in another line. This works well. Also, try to complete your sales letter on a single page with a payment button at the end. Keep everything on a single page with a few text links at the bottom like disclaimer, privacy, etc.
19. Target your sales copy to a particular market.
Put some true testimonials from those who really have benefited from your product or service. This has been found to give a boost to the sales process because readers think that people who have already purchased it have benefited, so their chances are better.
20. Give out some useful and quality free bonuses, not some worthless ones. This is to boost your sales as customers are influenced to buy the product or service if there are some other quality products free.
21. Give out a freebie even if your reader does not buy. For this, you may ask for his or her email ID and later follow is, you may ask for his or her email ID and later follow up. If you offer a quality product or service, the subscribers may be impressed with your product or service, and there are more chances that they will return to you and buy what you offer.
22. Use phrases like wait, don’t go,” “there is more,” “listen to me,” etc. This leads readers from one paragraph to another, keeping their interest in the site.
23. Ask your visitors what sort of information they are interested in using checkboxes. This works great. Direct your customers to place orders immediately using the payment button of a highly reliable payment processor. Avoid using click here to order; instead, say click the following payment button to order. So be specific in your approach. Most people love this.
24. Make the ordering process simple, easy, and clear as to exactly what to do, and one click away.
Include all methods to order. For example, some people hesitate to use their credit cards online, so keep other methods like payment on delivery, payment by demand draft, payment by money order, payment by postal order, etc. available on the site. Certainly, this results in more sales.
25. Make it clear to your customers exactly when the product will be delivered to them after they make a payment. Put your business on autopilot to deliver the product as soon as the transaction is completed.
26. Offer a “no questions asked 30-day money-back guarantee”. Take away their last reason to leave the site without buying. But return their money honestly, as promised, if they are not satisfied with your service or product. If you do not, this will ruin your reputation in the online world.
27. Include a postscript P.S. to recapitulate your offer.
People love to see the P.S. see the price tag and what they are getting for their money. Always use a P.S.
28. Include a second postscript. P.P.S. Here you must remind your readers of the time limit, add another free gift, or make use of some other attention-grabbing cause that forces a visitor to make a purchase.
29. Keep your site up-to-date and include all the latest developmental trends on your website.
30. Sometimes visitors like your website but do not have time to read it. Provide a “Don’t forget to bookmark us” button, link, or reminder on your website to encourage visitors to come back.
Using these secret tips on your sales page, your sales will significantly increase.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
Payment processor:
You need to incorporate a safe and highly trusted payment processing system with your website. There are many online payment processing systems, but I prefer to use PayPal. The payment processors handle all the transactions on your behalf for a small fee. All you have to do is put a small code for a payment button in the source code of your website, upload it, and that is all. Check the payment button to see whether it is working or not. Test the system properly.
Click the following link to join Paypal if you are not a member. It is free to join; there is no registration fee.
You may also search for a good and trustworthy company in India that would accept online payments (credit cards) on your behalf, take a fee, and remit the rest into your bank account or your home address. However, I suggest you open your own merchant account with the bank. Visit your nearest bank and confirm the procedure for opening a merchant account for your online business.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
SSL certificate-Online security/Secure Server
Your order must be on a secure server. The SSL certificate, or digital certificate, helps you build visitor’s trust in your site. It makes your website secure, especially when your visitors or buyers type some sensitive information like their credit card numbers, etc. while making any purchase from your site.
The information remains between your web server and your client’s web browser. No third party will know about this sensitive information. Hence, online security for your customers and more of your sales There are different types of SSL certificates to be chosen depending upon your business. Certainly, digital certificates (SSL encryption) convey a message of being serious about the customer’s online security.
A study has shown that 21% of online visitors refrain from buying with their credit cards because they are scared of getting their credit card numbers exposed on insecure sites. Your digital certificates will solve this problem and boost your sales.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
Subject your website to various Tests
You’ve made a great website, put it on a server with a reliable hosting company, and added a safe and trusted payment processor to it. Now you have to see whether your site is working and accessible or not. Subject your website to various tests as described below: –
1. Content proofing
Give a thorough reading to the whole website, including all pages, and check for spelling and grammar errors. Rectify all errors and ensure your site displays a professional look.
2. Browser Testing
Type your website address in your browser and see if it loads there. Also, test the site in all the types of browsers; the site should be able to load in all of them to make the site available to users of different browsers like Internet Explorer 4, 5, and 6; Netscape 4 and 6; Mozilla Firefox; and Opera. If your site does not open in these browsers, you will lose customers who will look for another site.
3. Visual Testing
In this test, the site should look decent and be attention-grabbing. Test all the web pages and check graphs, other design aspects, and the purpose the site is meant for. The site should be pleasing to the eyes of the readers to make them stay on it and read it. Test the site under different screen resolutions and colour depths to check out its absolute perfection and completeness from every angle of your reader.
4. Functionality Testing
This is to test the functioning of various components of your website. It involves the evaluation of site code, scripting, links, forms, etc. Remove the dead links, if any. Also, check the functioning of the payment processor. It should work properly, or else your efforts until now will go to waste.
Privacy Statement
People are more and more concerned and serious about the personal information that websites collect. You should clearly reveal how you would use such information collected online from your site visitors.
Your privacy page on your website should provide answers to the following questions so that your site visitors feel safe with your privacy policy and do not hesitate to give away their personal information on your site.
1. What do you do with the e-mail addresses you collect from visitors? Are you going to sell it, rent it, or share it with a third party for any marketing purposes, or not at all?
2. Why do you track visitor’s IP addresses visiting your site, and how do you use it?
3. If you have a forum or message board attached to your site, let your visitors know that care should be exercised when revealing their personal information in such public places.
4. Disclose clearly to your visitor that you have no concern with the privacy policies of the sites you are linking to.
5. If applicable, let your visitors know that you provide security to safeguard against loss, damage, or amendment of their personal information. For a successful online business, provide security to protect your site visitor’s personal information.
6. Tell your site visitors that they can opt out of their database or email list at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of each email you send them using an autoresponder.
7. Provide contact information on your website very clearly: an e-mail ID and/or phone number to answer your site visitors questions about your privacy policy.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
Online business security
You must clearly display legal forms on your site, such as Copyright, Terms of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, etc. Seek the assistance of an advocate to draft such legal documents if you cannot do it yourself. Hence, remain on the side of safety in the Internet world.
Automate your business.
If you are selling digital products from your website, you can fully automate the business. You can programme your website to sell, collect money, and deliver the product immediately, leading your customer to a download page where he can download the product after payment is cleared. You may also send the product via email as an attachment to your customer after the payment is cleared.
If you are selling a physical product like radios, you have to immediately dispatch the product to your customer after receiving the order. To avoid delay, you can contract with some person or company that will handle the delivery of the product on your behalf once you receive the order from the customer. In fact, you have to plan your business from every angle and automate it. I also suggest you learn the HTML web design language, as it will be frequently required of you in your new online venture. In case you can’t learn it, rely on some experts in the field who will update your website as and when needed.
Conversion rate
I think at this stage you should design your website and add web contents that are convincing and have a higher conversion rate. The conversion rate is the rate at which visitors are converted into customers. Indeed, you may engage a programmer or a web designer to use some HTML editor where no code is required to develop a website. Instead, type like in MS Word, design your website in an HTML editor, and get ready-made code without knowing web design. Afterward, upload your HTML files to the server, and your website is ready.
Initially, you will have some difficulty, but after a week or so, you will become familiar with the HTML files, which will help you in the long run. If you don’t know how to design, do some research on Google to find some free but good HTML editors for designing your website, or hire an expert. Do whatever suits you, but don’t wait to get your website ready.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
Monitoring your site and tracking sales
This is extremely important for your online success. You not only need to know what your visitors are doing on your website, but you also need a detailed analysis of your visitors.
For this, you will need to put a small piece of code on the source page of your website, which will do all the work for you. When you put this code on your website, anyone who visits it gets recorded on the remote server with other details. There are both free and commercial log analysis packages available on the Internet to record the following information:
- How many visitors visited your site?
- To which country, state, and city do they belong?
- What is their IPS?
- Which keywords and key phrases do people type in their browsers to find your site in the search engine results?
- What traffic is coming from other sources where you have put your site link?
- Which pages are more frequently visited by the people they are interested in?
- How do people move around your site?
- What is the total duration of time the visitors stayed on your site?
What is the total number of page views?
It is always either equal to or more than the number of visitors, but it cannot be less. At least one visitor means a one-page view. One visitor may result in two page views if he visits two of your web pages, and so on. Be noted, if you are getting only a one-page view per visitor, you should immediately renew the contents of your site and make it more interesting to enable visitors to view more of your web pages and stay on your site for a longer period.
Also note the total number of unique visitors, not the total number of visitors; this may tell you the total number of new visitors to your site, which should increase as your website grows. Once a visitor visits your site, he is added to your unique visitors’ list. If he again visits your site, he is simply a visitor and not a unique visitor. I hope the difference is clear.
I recommend you use the following free but powerful tracking tools:
http://www.Google.com/analytics
Other trustworthy tracking tools are:
Please do not simply put a counter on your site, as this will only tell you the number of hits and visitors per day. I do not suggest going for it. You can look for a more in-depth site analysis tracking tool if you feel the need for your business.
1. Tracking your sales
It is equally indispensable for an online business, like an offline one, to track your sales and maintain records of all the transactions of your business. Your expenditure on advertising, hosting your website, and similar expenses must be less than the amount you are generating from sales. If it is more, you are at a loss and should stop the business.
Keep your expenditures low, and once sales start coming in, you can expand them accordingly for more profits. It is worthwhile to use advanced accounting software such as QuickBooks or Microsoft Money to keep sales records.
If you become an affiliate marketer, which means you sell other marketer’s products for a commission, your traffic and sales tracking mechanisms are already provided on the marketer’s site. You have to use your login credentials to access the details. There is no need to use a separate tracker, nor can you do that because the owner of the site is someone else. You do not have access to the source code of his website. You are simply selling his products.
However, you can use a separate personal URL and use the redirection service to lead to your affiliate link. By doing this, people will think they are buying from the main site and not from the affiliate link, which may benefit them. Additionally, it is a secret for affiliate marketing.
2. Successful businesses on the internet
A study has revealed that the most popular products that could be sold on the internet are:
Products like computers, electronics, books, e-books, travel, clothes, music, subscriptions, gifts, investments, jewelry, and diamonds.
Also, businesses like hotel reservations, air travel, online schooling, hosting websites, etc. are prosperous on the internet.
Research has also discovered that a person stays on a business website for about 20 minutes, followed by general news and entertainment.
What discourages people from online shopping is the high shipping cost and time involved in getting the products to their homes. Sometimes the high cost of the products also does the same job when they are comparatively cheaper somewhere else. A study has shown that 21% of people holding credit cards are scared of having their credit card numbers exposed on the Internet.
Cost of the product
For a successful online business, among other factors is the price of your product, which should be fixed at an optimum level, neither too low that people will underestimate the product nor too high that people will rush somewhere else in the online or offline world to buy it. As a matter of fact and obligation on your part, you need to do comprehensive market research to fix the cost of your products.
The Internet is a magnanimous source of information and a giant marketplace. A study has revealed that the number of people buying online is increasing day by day. You may sell anything on the Internet if you have a product (especially your own product) that has a market.
best website design layout principles guidelines and golden rules
Responsive website design
The term “responsive website design” refers to creating websites that maintain a readable and usable format across various platforms and devices.
A website that utilizes a responsive design will automatically change itself to fit a variety of screen widths and viewports.
The concept of “Responsive Website Design” refers to the practice of utilizing HTML and CSS to cause a website to automatically adjust, conceal, reduce, or increase itself to ensure that it appears appealingly on all platforms (desktops, tablets, and phones).
This approach eliminates the need for separate mobile and desktop versions of a website, streamlining the development process and providing a consistent user experience across all devices. That is particularly important in today’s world, where people use various devices to access the internet. And it ensures that users have a consistent experience regardless of their device.
Responsive website design has become increasingly important as more people access the internet on their mobile devices. It can also improve a website’s search engine ranking, as search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites.
This means that having a responsive website is beneficial not only for the user experience but also for the visibility of the website. As mobile usage continues to grow, having a responsive website has become a necessity for businesses to stay competitive in today’s digital landscape.
Using videos in your website elements design
Using videos to keep your site visitors engaged on your site. The utilization of short videos is yet another effective strategy that can be utilized to draw in site visitors and encourage them to remain on a website for an extended period. These videos serve as an introduction to your business, your merchandise, or anything else that you are making accessible on that platform.
When you embed videos like these onto your website, you will see an increase in the number of sales you receive. This results directly from how the content is presented in the video, which is compelling. In addition, in comparison to still images or text, videos involve the spectator in a more in-depth interaction with the product or service being promoted.
As a consequence of this, the client develops faith in your organization and becomes more prepared to spend money. Hence, even though your expenses are somewhat more, you are still benefited. Because of this, including videos as part of your marketing strategy can be a highly effective way to boost sales and improve the level of gratification experienced by customers.
You can differentiate your business from those of your competitors and win more customers by investing in high-quality video material.
In this way, providing prospective consumers with an experience that is both more interesting and more likely to be remembered.
The viewer’s feelings are imprinted in a very tangible way by the videos they watch. Taking advantage of this, marketers use video marketing, a visual form of advertising, to promote their goods and services.
Due to its capacity to mesmerize and interest viewers, video marketing has grown in popularity. It allows marketers to convey their message in a more dynamic and memorable way than traditional forms of advertising.
CORNERSTONE CONTENT ON DIGITAL MARKETING
DIGITAL MARKETING:
AFFILIATE MARKETING:
DOMAINS:
DIGITAL SKILLS:
WEBSITE DESIGN:
This article is nicely written and is comprehensive one covering all possible points necessary for an ideal website design. Thank you for bringing this huge information to public.