Website Design Guide

How to Design a Website that Sells

I personally wish that EVERY ugly website with useless info products or just ads would drop off the Internet. So does Google!

The spider programs run by the big search engine companies to build their "search databases" read every website online. They are setup with rules to reward or punish websites that do NOT provide quality content that is considered relevent to the keywords, or search terms entered.

Here are the basic rules to design a "good" website that sells your products:

1. Focus on a Product or Product Line.
2. Add Credibility with Branding and Testimonials.
3. Provide clear Navigation and a Site Map.
4. Make sure all your links work and graphics display.
5. Build Trust with Privacy Policies, Contact Information, and FAQ's.
6. If you sell directly on your website, integrate a good shopping cart properly with shipping and payment policies clearly stated up front.
7. Provide credit card processing in addition to PayPal, if you sell directly on your website. Not everyone likes to use PayPal. Now you can add Google Payment Processing too.
8. Add plenty of relevent content and convincing sales copy - CONTENT is KING to selling online.

Fancy graphics and flashy banners might be cool, but they will not convince anyone to buy your product. If you want them, add them later, after you have proven that you have a good product, convincing sales copy, and already have plenty of buyers (and therefore, money to invest in improvements).

Most visitors will quickly recognize a "cookie cutter" website, or one that is impersonal and just like many others they have seen. While you can get one of these websites already built for a song and a dance, you might have trouble selling the products on it. BEWARE!

Wouldn't you hate to spend a bunch of money to market a website that doesn't entice buyers to pull out their wallets and buy from you? Put that thought into your website design and sales copy, right up front.

Save money and skip those "cookie cutter" template website offers

For more help with your website design, please check out My Minisite Network. I include a pre-design questionaire (specifications) which will help to get started your website design as soon as you have decided on your product line.

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