If you are developing online website business, you have to treat online readers as kings! This is reality. The #1 rule to develop web site is not attracting search engine, but rather to serve the online readers. If you do not serve them well, even the search engines will desert you.
You have to have this concept in mind when you develop web site. First, you should target a group of visitors and ask yourself – what do they want? Then, you have to serve them well, treat them like kings. If visitors like your site, they will stay longer, they will bookmark it, link to it and visit it offen. Then, sooner or later, search engines will notice that, and they will give the site a higher ranking and channel more visitors to it. The success of your web site is depending on this. This is the most important concept. If your site do not serve your readers well, no matter how much efforts and money you spend to promote your site, you will fail!
To serve your visitors well, these are things you should avoid:
- Do not inconvenience them.
When you design your page, always ask yourself – Will it inconvenience my readers?
I have seen some web sites with pages wider than the screen. Imagine readers have to scroll the horizontal scroll bar to read one line of text from the left to the right and scroll back to read the next line. It is very inconvenient to the readers. So, what will they do? – Quit, it is so troublesome here!
I have seen another site which readers can only navigate using 'next' or 'previous' link. Readers have to click 'next' link many time to get to the last page, and to get back to the home page, readers have to click 'previous' link many times. I recall a documentary titled 'Walking with Dinosaurs!' and I just felt I was walking in a 'Dinosaur' site. Put jokes aside, remember – online readers are not so patient. They will not walk with you from pages to pages unless you give them a good reason to do so.
There are other forms of inconveniences. Nevertheless, if you are sensitive enough, you should be able to avoid them all.
- Do not waste their time.
Online readers may be free to surf the net (actually, many of them are not that free). That does not mean they are willing to wait. They hate waiting. If your site takes long time to load they will just leave. They will ask 'Why should I wait here?, there are trillions of sites out there to explore'. So, bear this in mind, keep track of your loading time, response time, etc. This could mean cut down on complicated graphics, big banners etc. If your web server is the source of the problem, you might want to switch to other hosting company.
- Do not strain their eyes.
Your eye sights may be good, but not so for all your visitors. Slightly smaller font is still not an issue. I am talking about text color matching with the background color. Some people like to use dark background with bright shiny colorful text. Some with text color tone pretty close to the background. It really strains your eyes. You have to be sensitive about the color scheme matching.
Most importantly, do not compromise on readability. My advice is to avoid all shiny colors especially when text is involved. If you are not good in color matching, choose the white background. It is easiest to match with text colors. Simple and clean is better than complexity. The above mentioned pointers are simple thoughts that are easy to follow. Try surfing other people’s web sites for a while as a surfer. You will come across sites you do not want to visit again. Take note and do not do the same when you create your own.
That is not all. As I mentioned earlier, 'target a group of visitors and ask yourself – what do they want?' Your site development concept has to be driven by catering to 'what they want', not by 'what I offer'.
- Drive your site concept by what your targeted visitors’ want.
If they want free stuffs, give them some, be generous. After all, many things in the net are free. You do not offer, others will.
If they want information, give them information. If they want knowledge, give them some too. You should have some knowledge to share, don't you? You may be using your site to sell professional services, as a lawyer, doctor, psychologist, consultant etc. Knowledge may carry some price tags to you. But if you do not give some free advice on the net, your competitors will. Whose site will be popular? It will be the one sharing his advices and knowledge freely. Your price tags should only put on those items which can not find (or very hard to find) free in the internet.
- For affiliate marketers, you should pre-sell instead of selling your merchant’s product.
By pre-selling, it means that you should prepare, warm up your customers before directing them to your merchant. You may want to visit this site: [ برای مشاهده لینک ، با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ] to learn more about it.
Very often, we tend to ask the 'How' question - how to do this, how to do that…. However, many a time we fail to examine the 'Why' question – why do we do this, why do we do that… and at the end we loss our focus.
Sound confusing? Refer to this article, I am trying to orientate you on the 'Why' question. How to choose color schemes, how to give free stuffs, free information…- these are not the key point. You can solve them yourself by applying your common sense. The key point is 'Why' you want to do all these – that is because you realize online readers are the kings, you want to serve them well, your success depends on them!
IT Articles 2007
