Planning A Web site
It’s critical while planning the layout of your website to keep your customer foremost in your mind. Many larger corporations plan their website around their organizational structure. While this is logical to people who work for the company, it would make the site’s navigation difficult for customers.
A better approach is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and design your web pages around the questions they need answered and the path they’d use to easily navigate the site. In the example below, we have clearly identified an expected conversion path beginning with the “Home” page and ending at the “Contact Us” page.
What is a Conversion Path?
A conversion path is the logical sequence of web pages a user would visit:
* to collect enough information to decide that your product or service solves their problem, and
* enable him/her to take the last steps toward doing business with you.
Conversion pages (orange above) are calls to action, encouraging users to commit to your product or service. From the website owner’s viewpoint, conversion pages are the primary reason for their website. Conversion pages either finalize the sale (shopping cart) or enable the selling to continue (contact us and RFQ).
Five Standard Web Pages
Most sites should have five basic web pages:
Importance of Flat navigation—Product Groups (families) and Products
Data shows that your site loses 40% of its visitors each time they have to click one level down into your website. For example, if 100 visitors click onto your home page, only 60 will make it to a level two page and 36 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.
A common mistake companies make in creating too many levels is an "Our Products" or "Our Services" link on the home page. Most times this extra level is unnecessary and ultimately reduces conversion.
Do you need database populated product pages?
The decision whether to build dynamic data base driven pages verses static html pages depends on the number of pages you need and their uniformity. If your site requires a large number of pages, it’s often quicker and less expensive to build several templates (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 and location of information for each product (or product group). Standardization of each page, in addition to making use of templates, also makes it easier for users to navigate your website.
Need help laying out your website? Contact Site-Seeker, Inc. today!
