Designing Your Website

5. Organising Your Material

5.1 The web is a dynamic medium. Change and update your content often.

• Changes to your home page signal to repeat visitors that there is something new to see on your site.

5.2 Make people feel welcome the moment they arrive at your home page.

• People usually know what they are looking for when they go to a website. Let them know quickly that this is the right place.
• Give visitors immediate payoffs - news, offers, or key information they will want.
• Your proposition should be clear. Customers should immediately understand what your website offers

5.3 Make regular customers feel special.

• Use restricted areas to allow business customers to enter a password and see appropriate prices and discounts.
• Provide an opportunity for regular buyers to record their details permanently, rather than having to enter them on every visit. This is usually achieved by asking customers to log in to the site.

5.4 If you are selling online, the design of your site should make it easy for people to buy.

• Anticipate queries and give clear answers.
• Illustrate your products clearly.
• Make order forms easy to find and fill in.
• Reassure nervous buyers with convincing customer testimonials.
• Provide secure facilities for credit card purchases.
• Offer as many payment methods as you can and let buyers choose which to use.
• Spell out the terms of a guarantee.
• Provide clear statements of your data privacy policy and your policy on goods returned and exchanged.
• If you are hoping to make sales overseas, give details of shipping costs and taxes that are likely to apply.