TEmelie - web design blog

First impressions

First of all I would like to make on thing clear: Web site are an important channel for promoting a company or an individual. More and more people and businesses become aware of this, but they don’t manage to attract or maintain customers via their Web pages. The main reason for this is that their homepages can’t illustrate in as little words as possible (especially on the front page) what the company is all about. The current trend is to showcase only the latest achievements or the latest services that can be offered.

This is great for existing customers but doesn’t work so well for new potential customers. If a potential client visits your Web page and can’t get a clear picture in his head about what your company stands for in a few moments, he will give up and move along in the drop of dime.
Some of the most common elements that one can see on a company’s web page right now are as follows: products for sale, news and press releases, events and announcements, navigation, search. Right from the start anyone can see that these topics aren’t enough to fully satisfy the client’s curiosity. The one thing that’s most important, a brief, straight to the point description of the company, is ironically, missing.

Current customers

A constant concern of companies is represented by existing customers. Naturally they know what the company does and what it represents, but your Web site should at the same time, be a source for attracting new clients as well as keeping the old ones. As always this can be achieved through compromise between the needs of returning customers and the information new client crave. This sounds like an impossible thing to do but in fact is a feat fairly easy to accomplish. All you need to do is to insert one or two sentences that contain links to different areas of interest. Don’t fool yourself by leaving this out, because although this will satisfy the requirements of one department, it will cost you a bundle by alienating potential customers.

How to examine a home page

Here are a couple of indicators that instruct you what to look for, when examining any Web page from this point of view:
-What is the company’s purpose and how well is it presented in text or by simply making it obvious from the layout itself.
-What products or services are in offer
-Well defined link to other pages that contain more information. For example links such as “about us” or “company information”
-All the information presented above should be “above the fold”. This means that it should be available in a lower resolution server without the customer needing to scroll.