Contrary to many beliefs, a user-friendly website design is not easy. There are several factors shaping the web layout and the architecture of a site; some see them as rules, others believe there are no rules at all. Yet, as far as business websites are concerned, certain guidelines do exist.
About Us and Contact Us
The role of a business website is to represent a company and its products on the web, describing the company's objectives and providing enough information for the users about who they are dealing with. The "about us" area should include general information about the management team, company history and company philosophy. It is also advisable to display photos of the team and the managers here. The simple reason behind this advice is that pictures enhance credibility, as people believe that you are not trying to hide.
Some websites use the "about us" category to show maps and addresses for the company, while others employ a "contact us" area where they display contact forms, phone and fax numbers or department emails. For some users there is nothing more annoying than being forced to fill in long contact formularies or registrations. Try to avoid such practices by being flexible and providing options. Let your users decide if they want to fill in all the details or if they'd rather save some time and fill in a short form.
Products and Services
Depending on what a company has to offer, the "products" and "services" areas are devoted to goods or services that are either sold on the website or advertised there in order to be sold somewhere else. The categories should be clearly structured, the descriptions simple and relevant, illustrated by related pictures or graphics, if necessary. Avoid overloading the section with too many images, because they will distract users from the content.
News
The section should answer these simple questions: what's new about your company or products and services? Do you have any recent awards or events worth a web presentation? Write a text and publish it in this category. Keep it simple and try to use as many business related keywords as possible. See the rules for writing press releases. More: distribute your news and press releases on relevant web outlets and drive traffic to your site.
Try to get testimonials from your clients and display them online. Sometimes even a critique shown online can bring you positive reactions. People will appreciate your honesty, and will trust you more than they trust companies which praise their own success too much. Be realistic, careful and show concern for the users, not for yourself.
Disclaimer or Privacy Policy
This is not just a rule: it's a must! Companies deal with clients who wish their privacy to be protected. Unfortunately, sometimes sites can provide illegal or harmful information, so you should assure your visitors they will be safe. Wikipedia defines a disclaimer as follows: "A disclaimer is a legal statement which generally states that the person/group authoring the disclaimer is not responsible for any mishap in the event of using whatever object or information the disclaimer is attached to." The privacy policy is, according to the same source, a disclaimer as well: "A privacy policy is a disclaimer placed on a website informing users about how the website deals with a user's personal information."
Put simply, maintaining audience expectations and delivering usable content are the main factors influencing the success of a business website. But the website architecture has to be followed by a cutting edge design and reliable ways to increase users' loyalty.
Newsletters
If you are planning to have a lot of fresh content that changes often, you may offer users the option to sign up for eNewsletters. These should not be sent too often: studies show that too many reminders become an annoyance for many clients. As email newsletters feel more personal than websites, they will generate different, more positive, emotional reactions for the users. The subscribe and unsubscribe options allow companies to measure success by monitoring how many users are interested in receiving periodic information and how many lose their interest? The key to successful eNewsletter campaigns is simple: DO NOT SPAM! Let people go if they choose to unsubscribe. If your messages become annoying, the negative feelings from one client will easily go to another. "Verba Volant!"
Just like website design, the newsletter design should be uncomplicated and user friendly. That implies people should be able to find what they are looking for fast. Even the subscribe and unsubscribe processes should be fast: the longer the time needed to subscribe or unsubscribe, the higher the loss of customer satisfaction.
So keep the newsletters simple, useful and easy to deal with. Do not overload clients with information. Just tell them the basics and, if they are interested, they will certainly get back to you requesting more information. To succeed, write good subject lines that will help users distinguish the newsletter from spam. Each headline has to make sense and preferably be followed by a short abstract of the general content. Plain language is the best approach. People don't need to get the feeling they are teased or led on. For reference visit Pamil Visions and get the "Writing Newsletters" *.pdf document you can find in the downloads area.
Other Issues
Branding your business doesn't refer only to stationery and printed brochures. The website is an ideal means for promoting your business visual standards. Include your logo at the top left of all pages linking it with the home page. Respect your corporate color scheme to have a consistent look and feel in all your pages. Again, I encourage you to visit Pamil Visions or other branding and public relations related sites for advice in this matter.
Consistency is a powerful tool. When things stay the same form page to page, users know what to expect. They will not feel intimidated by new approaches or exasperated by unnecessary artifices. For example, Flash effects collected the bronze medal for annoyance. Leave them out. Why should you open your site with an intro most of the users will skip anyways? The same goes for pop-ups!
Make the site easy to read choosing the fonts and their colors carefully: not too big or too light. The most legible fonts are standard serif and sans-serif (Times, Arial; Verdana). The pictures and graphics should have small file sizes to avoid slow loading pages. They should also be optimized for the web and described in the HTML code of the pages to facilitate faster loading.
In general, the content you write for the web should be short, scannable and to the point. Some business sites are afraid that users will copy their valuable texts and use them somewhere else, getting commercial advantages, so they ask the designers to display texts as a picture. Wrong: have you ever heard of print screen? If someone wants to copy your work, they will do it anyway no matter if we talk about text or graphics. You'd just lose search engine points by avoiding texts. So, good luck in this responsible task of content writing!
