Design Your E-commerce Website Right

Remember that old television series “The Twilight Zone”? It featured sci-fi fantasies that metaphorically demonstrated people’s hopes, fears and despairs. The actors would be cruising along enjoying a somewhat normal life and then suddenly they entered “a new dimension” where everything was confusing and intimidating.

A lot of business people feel like they have entered the Zone when they take that first step into the online world. The online world is very different from the real world; it’s a new business dimension. The problem many successful offline business people have is that everything is somewhat similar in a warped was but many of the old techniques don't work.

In traditional business, we learned to woo our prospective clients ~ spend time with them, set the mood, and make a sales pitch that entices them to buy from us.

People still want all that once they’ve decided to do business with you and it's important to offer comforts like a phone number on the site, support etc. They want to know that you understand what they need and that you can deliver. But the truth is, in most cases they don’t want or need "foreplay" on your website. Granted this concept does not work for everyone so keep in mind I'm speaking about a select type of website.

Website examples

Your website is your first point of contact when you do business on the internet. Leads are already qualified by the time they get there. They want to find out what they want to know, what you can do for them and what it’ll cost . . . period! They want information and they want it quick! That’s just how human nature has evolved.

Because of this mentality shared by many web browsers, a professional website design company concentrates on developing a website that loads quickly and is user-friendly; delivering the information your visitors seek without wasting their time.

Website development should be focused on meeting the needs and desires of the website visitors, not on demonstrating artistic talents. Now don't get me wrong here, I wouldn't buy from a site that looks terrible either, but there's a line some people cross. I like to put everything online into perspective by comparing the real world we're comfortable with. Let's take the comment I just made and put it into the real world. Would you buy clothing from a jittery guy selling it from the back of his van? No way! But at the same time you don't need a Vegas show with flashing bright lights and music after you walked into a store either. Here's an online example . . .

Say you've decided to plan a trip to Disneyland and you want to know what lodging is going to cost you. You go online and search for hotel rates in Anaheim. Do you really need to watch a flash presentation of Mickey and friends before you are able to get into the site and find the information about hotel rates, or is that a waste of your time? Do you sit through the 1 minute presentation and then move on to gathering the information you want, or do you click your back button because you know there's hundreds of other sites just a click away?

My point? Website development has to be tailored to the target audience. The “want it now” mentality deserves a professional website design company’s undivided attention. Of course flash presentations and “neat” things like that can enhance the attractiveness of your site design, but they should not be used at the expense of losing traffic to competitors.