| Experienced online marketing companies and web | | | | inviting homepage layout all the potential customers are |
| design companies know how much a well designed | | | | going to simply walk away. A home page is the critical |
| layout is important to the success of an online | | | | point where a potential customer can get an instant |
| business. Let us assume that your website is like a | | | | idea of what he or she can expect to get from the |
| virtual office or a virtual showroom and the home | | | | website. This is precisely why I always make it a point |
| page is your reception desk. Isn't it important to have a | | | | to spend some quality time just on the layout alone. |
| well maintained and tastefully done reception with | | | | Adding and mixing the right colors, graphics and easy |
| pleasant and courteous reception staff to greet your | | | | navigational links are a top priority for me. |
| customers? | | | | There are plenty of statistics that prove beyond a |
| First impression is the best impression and this is very | | | | doubt that a proper layout contributes immensely to |
| true in the case of online business too. I have come | | | | the success of an online business. Anyone with a |
| across many onsite business owners complaining that | | | | thorough knowledge of how an online business works |
| their website is not delivering the expected results in | | | | and has helped online businesses taste success by |
| spite of employing good Search Engine Optimization | | | | providing good web designs will endorse my views. My |
| (SEO) methods. They complain that even though the | | | | formula for developing layouts for websites is to keep |
| traffic generated is satisfactory, the visitors to their | | | | the design simple yet attractive. My practice is not to |
| websites don't hang on, they just vanish. This is like so | | | | provide everything on the home page itself but to |
| near and yet so far because on the internet you are | | | | place easily identifiable navigational links that are easy |
| only a click away from your competition. | | | | to use for the customer. The trick is in helping the |
| I wanted to find out why customers don't enter these | | | | customer find his way into the site and the more time |
| sites even after the search engines brought them to | | | | he or she spends on the site, the more chances of the |
| the websites. The answer was staring right at my | | | | prospect converting to a sale. I select graphics that |
| face when I clicked on the websites. The home page | | | | have a role to play and a message to convey rather |
| layout was boring, dull, colorless and confusing. The | | | | than cluttering up the site with graphics that are added |
| links were cluttered and the whole structure of the | | | | for effect and nothing else. Color schemes are chosen |
| home page was in one word, uninteresting. This was | | | | with a purpose. The purpose is to get the attention of |
| the reason why most of the customers didn't want to | | | | the target customers and retain it. |
| enter the site. Subconsciously they got repulsed at the | | | | Given the fact that visual appeal increases the |
| way the site looked and went searching for more | | | | chances of success and we humans process visuals |
| attractive sites. I solved the problem by entirely | | | | around 60,000 times faster than other forms of |
| restructuring the layouts of their websites by adding | | | | communication and also the fact that most of what |
| colors, and graphics to emphasize the areas we | | | | we learn is through our eyes, don't you think it is |
| wanted the visitor to notice. I also placed the links in | | | | necessary to have images, color and graphics on the |
| such a way that it was easy for the visitors to | | | | website layout that are pleasing to the human eye? |
| navigate and enter. The results were amazing. These | | | | Your website is far too important to leave to |
| online businesses made dramatic turnarounds and their | | | | inexperienced designers, hiring a competent online |
| conversion rates increased significantly. | | | | marketing company can not only bring the right visitors |
| My years of experience in the online marketing | | | | to your website, but they can re-design the site to |
| industry have made me understand one important | | | | appeal to those visitors in ways that will vastly improve |
| aspect of website designing and that is; no matter how | | | | the performance of converting visitors to customers. |
| good a website is in luring visitors, without a good | | | | |