Today, ecommerce websites are cropping everywhere and people are increasingly opting to shop for their products online. Websites such as ebay and amazon have become quite popular due to their vast array of products and prompt delivery. However, one factor which often goes under the radar when it comes to web design is the fact that the effectiveness of the website is based on not design but functionality. Increasingly, people who log onto websites are better educated and know what to look for. Websites which are haphazardly built without a purpose are shunned by both search engines and visitors.
The Importance Of Content
Content plays an important role in increasing the conversion rate of the website. Getting the website on the first page of Google is a difficult task but this alone does not guarantee visitors. One has to ensure that the website provides exactly what the visitors are looking for in order to be effective.
Content should be: crisp, clean and meeting international standards.
If the website offers poor and unintelligible content placed without forethought, visitors are going to move on. One of the major factors for high bounce rate is the lack of quality content. Grammatical and spelling mistakes are bound to creep into any written text. However, the website owner has to ensure that such deficiencies are removed before it is uploaded onto the hosting site. Once, the website is online changes can be made but this can be an expensive process.
Content should not be: promotional, filled with errors and run of the mill.
Flash Images
A common mistake which novice website designers and website owners make is the inclusion of flash pages. These pages are not recognized by search engines and hence cannot be optimized. Moreover, they increase the loading time of the website manifold. When the loading time goes up, the bounce rate also increases. In essence, they are directly proportional to each other and therefore detrimental to the effectiveness of the website. One has to ensure that the images used are capable of being cached by search engines and also that the important text is not placed on any of these flash images, if and when used.
Wire framing
It is quite tempting to jump into the html and java script stage as soon as you start building the website. However, the best websites are those which are built with a certain degree of planning. Making a wire frame is the first and most important step in the process and this makes the rest of the work easy. Wire frames need not be fancy or extensive but simple non-graphical sketches are more than sufficient.
Testing
Once the website is built it has to undergo a series of testing phases. This will highlight any bugs and errors which are present and thereby help you remove them. The testing is often ignored and mistakes are noticed only after the website goes online. If potential clients land up on the website and it shows an error, it creates a negative impact in their minds. Moreover, some designers neglect certain browsers and test the website only for internet explorer, which is the default one. However, these days, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Safari have become popular and the website has to be tested for each of these. These days several technologies are available and it might be tempting to add these to the website. However, many browsers do support these technologies and it would be waste of both time and money.
At the end of the day, if the website is capable of providing what the visitor is looking for he will stay on the page and may even convert into a client. However, failure to follow the above mentioned steps will lead to an increase in the bounce rate and reduction in search engine rankings as well.
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