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Is Your Website Visually Appealing? Before you spend money to advertise your business on the internet you have to take the time to get your website ready. You would never pay for a newspaper or radio advertisement locally if your store front wasn't finished and all of your product placed beautifully would you? Of course not! I have been browsing the web and clicked on a button that interested me only to arrive at a website that looked 'half-baked' to say the least.
Here are some common
mistakes Poor Web Design It isn't hard today to create a cleanly designed website. There are templates and site builders that create the look for you and are just waiting for you to add text and images. But I've seen someone inexperienced take a good template an slaughter it with giant bold text, too many text colors and outsized images. Some home business starters have little or no design sense and that's ok - just hire someone else to do it for you. If money is short, swap some of your product for a designer's time. If you can't afford a website designer, try a Virtual Assistant. While a VA may not have lots of graphical ability, they should know how to create a site that's clean and well organized. Bad Graphics Web graphics shouldn't be overdone but you do need a well designed header graphic that will appear on the top of every page and you'll probably want a few complimentary graphics created as well. Do pay a professional for this! Don't make it yourself with your greeting card software - it does not look ok that way. Seriously. Software that creates items for print do not lend themselves at all to the web. Bad Product Images This is crucial. Your products have to be presented clearly and attractively. Lighting and background for the photo is important, then the images have to be properly formatted for the web. Very few home based business owners are going to be able to hire a professional photographer but do use the best camera possible and get a clear shot. Then pay a graphic designer to prepare the images for the web. Lack of Information The last major item I'll mention here is your website text. Words sell! A picture tells the story but words sell it. Take the time to write good product descriptions and answer all of your clients questions about the purchase process up front! There's more we can tell you about getting a website ready to advertise but we'll tackle that in another article. - Kelly McCausey |
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