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Website Layout - Wire DiagramPlanning the layout of your website is critical. Many bigger companies or large corporations layout their website in a manner similar to the their organizational structure. While this is logical for people that work for the company, it makes it difficult customers and prospects to find information. A better approach is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and design your website around the questions or informational paths that they would follow. In the below example, we have clearly identified an expected conversion path beginning with the home page and ending at the contact us page.
|
Page Name |
Description or Purpose |
Notes/Content |
| Home Page | brief overview of products or services offered | Content Buckets: product image and short text |
| About Us | build credibility | year established, what makes you different, your story |
| Frequently Asked Questions | address common concerns, glossary of terms | questions at top of page, answers further down on page |
| Site Map | visitors use to quickly find information, search engine spiders use to more easily index entire website | list all pages on website and provide a brief description of each page |
| Contact Us | form page | name, company, email address also provides locations, representatives distributors and phone numbers |
Importance of Flat navigation - Product Groups (families) and Products
Data shows that your site loses 40 percent of visitors each time they have to click one level down into your website. In a hypothetical example, if you started off with 100 visitors to your home page, only 60 would make it to a level 2 page and 36 to a level three page (see table below). By flattening out your navigation and eliminating unnecessary levels more users will visit specific product pages and you will generate a higher conversion rate.
Many companies make the mistake of creating too many levels within their website. A common mistake is including a "our products" or "our services" link on the home page. Most times this extra level is unnecessary and ultimately reduces conversion.
| Level | Page Name | Number of Visitors arriving at this page | Number exiting this page |
| Level 1 | Home | 100 | 40 |
| Level 2 | Product Group A | 60 | 24 |
| Level 3 | Product A-1 | 36 | 14 |
Do you need database populated product pages?
The decision of whether to build dynamic data base driven pages verse static html pages depends on the number of pages you need and the uniformity of these pages. If your site requires a large number of pages it is often quicker and less expensive to build several templates and (product group and product levels in figure above) and populate these templates with product information contained in the database. However for this approach to be cost effective, you need to standardize the types of information for each product (or product group). Standardization of the types and location of information on each page, in addition to making use of templated possible, also makes it easier for users to navigate your website.
Need help laying out your website? contact site-seeker inc. today!