The problem is most products and services are unique or fall into a pretty generic group along with everyone else who sells the same thing. So, how are you going to get found by the visitor and ’speak’ to them so they first find, then choose your business?

You are going to start by talking their language and entering the conversation in their head. You will earn the trust of these people when you talk to them the same way they talk to each other and themselves. Try to imagine what the website visitor is going through to need your product or service. When they sit down to search, what would they be looking for and how they might start their search. Would they start with searching the exact product name and technical details? Probably not, how would they know what those were? Keep in mind, if they knew of a product/business already, they would go straight to the website, there would be no search conducted. So…

Most likely the potential visitor would start by searching for information about the problem at hand. By this I mean the pain point are they trying to address.That would be something they know, but what they don’t always know is how to solve it and/or what the solution is. That’s where your website comes in. Your website would lead with information about solving problems, not information about the product or service itself. Now, here’s the perfect example of what I’m talking about.

I know this is an old over-used example, but…it’s just so good I can’t resist using it, yet again.

Nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill. They wanted a hole. What this means for you is that instead of providing information about drills, you should deliver information about making holes.

Some business goals to consider (think in terms of a year from now, 2 years from now) when determining your website goals are:

What do you want your website to do for you AND the visitor?

1. Inform
2. Inspire Awareness
3. Educate
4. Repeat Visitors
5. User Interaction
6. Media source
7. Resources
8. Measurement
9. Call-to-actions
10. Funding/ donations
11. Grow Rep & Branding

Qualitive Goals:

1. Market Position
2. Kind of Business
3. Target Audience/ Market

Potential conflicts of business goals (if any):

Other Goals:

Other Challenges:

Once you have this handly list populated, a web designer will have a great tool to design a website that will  accommodate these needs. It’s truly helpful.

Having the content also allows you convert text into graphics, punch out certain information which compliment the page layout and give visual interest.

In order to plan these things into the design, you must have all content up front before any design work can start else the usability of the site will be at stake.

Once you have the content in front of you, you can then plan the information architecture, which is how the website visitor will find their way around your site-navigation. Categories and sections will lay the ground work for the first phases of design.

Without having content upfront you risk the hazard of having to ‘jam’ things in, stick them where ever you can find room, well, you get the idea, it’s not ideal and does not help the usability of the site.

To have a professional website designed or an existing website assessed, visit Yellowfish Technologies.

Goes on to prove the geeks have it all wrong when it comes to selling!

Good, slick user interface is quite hard to achieve. It requires vision, imagination, training in human psychology AND a quite a bit of technical wizardy. Try navigating all corners of CSS and then make yourself cross browser. You’ll know what I’m talking about. Apple is where it is today simply because of it’s fantastic user interface. There’s nothing one could not do with good old PCs before Macs made a comeback. Yet people rushed to pay extra dollars to get the coolest computer on earth. Ease of use ? Stylish? Marketing? Status Symbol? Be different syndrome? You can call it what you like but if it were not for the beatiful interface, Apple wouldn’t have survived it’s comeback for this long.