Whenever you are building a website, you want to make it as easy to use as possible. When doing your web design, make sure that your web page navigation is intuitive, because website visitors are generally impatient. Whether your business is multi-national or local to Melbourne, your competition is still only a mouse click away.
Call To Action
Consider your website a work in progress. You will always want to measure how successful the conversion ratio is for your web page. So you will always be adjusting your wording, your graphic placement, etc. However you do want to have an overall plan for your website, and in that plan, you want to spur the visitor to act. First you will want to define the conversion steps to a sale, and they may look something like something like this.
When a visitor enters your site your goal is to get a mail, email and telephone lead. So you want to direct from the landing page to a services page, and from there you want to direct them to a contact page. On the contact page you want to have them give you their information, which allows you to effectively utilise your mailing list and other email marketing tools.
As the customer follows a clearly defined path through your website, they are getting more comfortable with the idea of leaving their information. So by the time that they click through to your contact page, and you ask for their name, address, phone number and email address, they are less resistant to filling out the contact form.
Intuitive Web Design and a Logical Architecture
The way information flows can make a big difference between website designs feeling fragmented and confusing, and feeling cohesive and flowing. Frequently overlooked, the data architecture on a website can make it more manageable for visitors and administrators alike.
For example, let's say that you have a website about dogs. If you just throw dog data up on the screen as it occurs you will have very random data, and no matter how good each article is, no one will use the site because it is too hard to navigate.
Instead, if you organize the data by breed, color, size, etc. then anyone looking at the page sees how you are grouping your data, and it makes sense. When is makes sense, the visitor is comfortable, and when they are comfortable they shop.
Build a Sitemap
Many of the content manager software systems (CMS) available on the internet have a sitemap generator, but even if you are not using CMS, building a sitemap can be well worth your while. A site map does two things. It literally gives your site's visitors a map to follow, which can come in handy if they get sidetracked or are having trouble finding what they want. It also gives the search engine web crawlers a direct link to every page on your website, which can help improve your search engine ranking. (Also see SEO Sydney)
Consider the Browser
Generally when doing any kind of software design the developer is thinking in terms of forward compatibility. However, the public at large is your visitor, and they will have cutting edge versions of the browsers as well as the oldest version still in operation and everything in between. Whether it is Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari, they all have multiple versions still in operation, and some of the older versions may need extra code in your website so that your page displays properly across most versions of most browsers. There are sites like browsershots.org on the web to facilitate your testing
Use CSS Layout
The way the human mind sees and organizes things is a frequently, studied subject. For years advertisers have been interested in what makes people act. A CSS framework on your web pages offers the natural balance that the brain seems to crave, and this translates into increased sales activity.
For professional web design, try searching your local area for comapnies that can offer you a good service. A quick web search for website design Brisbane or website design Sydney comes up with plenty of results to get you started.