The Four Pillars of Website Design

Some people think that a website is just a website but don’t realize how much actually goes into making sure it’s fully functional.?If a company is using a website for ecommerce purposes or as an online store, there are several components that must be in place for that website to effectively generate revenue.?Firstly, consumers must be able to find it.?If you’re invisible to your target audience, it doesn’t take much to know that nothing else matters.?Once people find your website, then they must feel comfortable enough to place an order.?These two points seem simple, but many ecommerce websites don’t meet these criteria.

Think of a website like a table.?If you kick out one of the legs, the whole table comes crashing down.?Similarly, there are 4 crucial aspects of a website that make it possible to maximize the amount of revenue it generates.

1.?????Visual Aesthetics

2.?????Conversion

3.?????SEO

4.?????Content

Visual Aesthetics – With the ocean of possibilities that online shoppers have these days, it’s easy enough for them to navigate away from a website that doesn’t give them a warm and fuzzy feeling.?It takes about half a second for visitors to form an opinion about a website and statistics show that 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive. It's also important to know that most consumers will shop with a competitor after having a poor website experience.

It’s estimated that more than half of all products being purchased on the internet, worldwide, are bought through Amazon.?For a consumer to place an order on a company's website instead of Amazon, that website must exude professionalism and quality.?Companies that bootstrap their website by hiring that guy who designs websites from home for $500 simply cannot compete with the likes of Amazon.?Cheap, homemade-looking websites don’t work and they never will.

Conversion – There’s a whole psychological aspect to selling products online.?Consumers will most definitely judge a company’s credibility based on its website design. In fact, websites that have a superior user experience generate a 400% higher conversion rate than poorly designed websites. Online shoppers are very fickle because they know they have many options.?If they aren’t having a positive user experience, they will navigate away from a website within seconds.?

If website visitors have a question and don’t see some type of call to action, they will click off the website and going onto the next.?Some consumers like to see a toll-free telephone number in the upper right corner of their screen so they can just pick up the phone and call to ask a question or place an order.?Others like the convenience of an online chat feature where they can get quick answers.?Some consumers prefer sending an email and don’t mind waiting for a response.?If a website doesn’t have all 3 of these options, it’s most likely losing sales.

There are many factors that can affect a website’s conversion rate.?Not having any special offers or incentives can significantly decrease your chances of making a sale.?Forcing your prospective clients to create an account and register their email address also decreases the chances of engagement. ?Difficulty navigating around a site is a recipe for disaster.?With the average conversion rate being about 1.5%, ecommerce companies have a very small window of opportunity to convert visitors to actual paying customers.

Every time a consumer must click to place an order, the chances of them actually placing that order are cut in half.?In other words, if a website has a products page that consumers must click on from the homepage, then they click on a product image to get more information, then they click the add-to-cart button…that’s 3 clicks in the purchasing process.?If that website is getting 1000 visits per month, they’ve just lost 500 potential orders when visitors had to click on the product page.?The remaining 500 visitors got reduced by half to 250 when they had to click again to get more information about the product.?Clicking again on the add-to-cart button reduced the possible conversion again in half to 125.?That’s how easy it is to go from 1000 visitors to 125 possible orders.?This is why some ecommerce websites have scrolling product windows right on the homepage.

SEO – Onsite search engine optimization is an important part of any website being found on Google and other search engines.?It is estimated that Google has over 200 factors it looks for in a website when determining how to rank it.?If an ecommerce website doesn’t have all of these factors in check, Google will bury the website so far down in the search engine result pages that no one will ever find it. If no one can find a website, aesthetics and conversion don’t even matter.

Content – One of the most important factors that Google looks for in a website is content in the form of text.?This is how Google can determine whether an ecommerce website is selling cosmetic products or auto parts, for example.?Without an adequate amount of keyword-rich text, Google won’t think a website is an important enough resource to list higher in the search engine result pages.?For a website’s homepage to be indexed, it must contain relevant keywords and enough content for Google’s standards.?A blog is one of the best ways to add content to a website.

About 30% of all Google searches are phrased in the form of a question.?Without answers to common or frequently asked questions, Google will have less of a reason to list a website when users enter their query.?If one website has 20 pages of content and another website has 2000 pages of content, the website with 2000 pages will most likely gain more visibility on Google, simply because it has more information.?Google has always been interested in providing a positive user experience and Google knows that its users are there looking for information.?

Summation – Website design is expensive.?Many ecommerce stores try to reduce their startup costs by cutting corners on this process.?By doing so, they are significantly decreasing their website’s ability to generate revenue.?If an ecommerce website doesn’t take all 4 of these factors into consideration, the site will undoubtedly hemorrhage cash over time.??Ecommerce companies that invest into their website’s user experience generally see a $100 return for every $1 they spend on website design. Therefore, going for that cheaper website designer could be a very costly mistake.

For more information about website design and development, call Illumination Consulting at 1-800-619-3734 or visit www.IlluminationConsulting.com .

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