The best site design is much simpler than you may think. It is a structure where you have a top banner, a left side navigation bar and a right side content screen. At the bottom is a footer. So when you create your table you need to have 3 rows and 2 columns. On the top and bottom row, merge the 2 columns so it appears as one.
If necessary, you can add a row under the header row that has links to HOME, SHOPPING CART, ABOUT US. But make this bar in Flash or Javascript so the search engines don’t try to rank you for the keywords home, shopping cart, etc. which are meaningless.
Your left navigation bar should have a structure that can be really long. Be fully descriptive with the links and use the basic blue underlined linking structure. The home page should have your main categories. For example:
Domain Name Registration
Web Hosting
Web Design
It may not look pretty, but people understand that the blue underline text is something that can be clicked on. You then create your sub structure on the next pages and put links to your products.
Your footer can be used to put in misspellings, alternate ways to say your key products, plurals, and put direct links to those pages.
Your content section in the right middle column should be used to target your main keywords. Use H1 title tags and use descriptive language.
It seems simple enough. But why do you see alot of flash websites, and sites that don’t use this basic structure?
Once you have realized that this is the best site structure and implement it, you can tweak so much of it to optimize the # of click throughs you are getting and sales that you are getting. You need to use things like compare your sales offers and split A/B testing to test whether people will click more in this senario or the other. However, if you aren’t getting enough traffic, then split testing is a waste of time until you do. Keep it in mind as something you will need to do once your site is rolling and doing decent business.
A few things you may want to consider right away with your web design right from the beginning:
- Show the credit cards you accept on the home page
- Show the SSL and Secure Site certificates
- Put your phone number on the top
- If you offer free shipping, free sales tax, match offers from other sites, say so on the home page
- If you have a money back guarantee–say so on the home page.
- Use HTML for the entire site. You can still have a search box, but make all your product pages in basic HTML.
- Have an Opt-In to a newsletter, free offer, discount coupon. You want to capture their information immediately. This is potential gold for you in case you want to make repeat sales and in some cases, first time sales.
This is just a short list of a few things I look at for my clients. Of course there is much more. But it is easy to get overwhelmed into inaction. The best thing to do is follow these few ideas and finsh them and then move on to the next level things to further optimize your site.
