In some respects, your website is like a living, breathing thing; it’s available 24X7, and requires consistent care and feeding.
Unlike a printed brochure, your website can continually evolve and improve through better content, easier navigation, greater functionality, and testing. Here are some tips for improving your site—and your customers’ experience with your site—by creating a more powerful and effective web presence.
Make it Easy for Your Customers to Access and Navigate Your Site
- Your website’s UI (user interface) should be simple, easy to navigate, and be up to date.
- The colour schemes used for backgrounds and copy should be pleasant and easy to read.
- Take into account web accessibility which ensures that those with vision impairment or dexterity challenges can use your site. This could be as simple as having an option to increase the size of the text on your website.
Keep Your Audience in Mind at All Times
Write your website content for your customers. Your content should be relevant, up-to-date, easy to read, and should convey how your products and services can be of benefit to your customers. Read more tips on web copywriting here.
Test, Test, Test
Make sure to test your website with different types of Internet connections such as cable, ADSL, and modem to see if the pages load fast. Avoid using graphic-intensive images that slow your site down without providing useful information.
Test your website with different browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari. You may be surprised how your web pages appear in different browsers.
Not everyone updates their browser to the latest version. It’s common that earlier versions of a browser will not properly show the content of your website. Design your website to be compatible across a wide variety of browsers and browser versions.
Test different functions on your site, such as checkout and registrations, with your customers. Ask someone to perform a specific task, and watch them to see how they fair. Do they struggle to make a purchase, or request information? Make sure the most important calls-to-action (e.g. "Buy Now" and "Contact Us"), are clearly visible on any web page.