Websites need to attract and hold viewers’ interest and make them want to revisit and—most importantly—BUY. Website viewing and clicking is based on automatic unconscious triggers, not conscious choices or decisions. Viewers experience an emotion in fractions of seconds. Most of our actions are determined by unconscious parts of our brain. We are not even aware of the complex system at work up there in our heads. It can be very unsettling to think that we may not be consciously controlling our thoughts and actions. But research shows that is exactly the case. So, how can you create a website that will make people buy, register, click, revisit?
Create a website with your target audience in mind. Know what your competitors are doing. Consider colors, placement, organization, font sizes, bold or italics, bulleted lists, short impactful sentences. You may think that viewers will read pages and pages of your site but the truth is you are lucky if they stay on your site for a couple of minutes. Most people click off in seconds.
As you build your website, be sure you are communicating rapidly re what makes you different, why the viewer will benefit from using your products and/or services and provide clear organization for the viewer to find what interests them immediately or they will move on to an easier-to-navigate site.
Creating your own website to save money is often “penny wise, pound foolish.” If you are going to design your own website make sure you research the psychology of colors, how the eye sees a page, and which specific features successful websites have in common.
When you choose to hire a web designer make sure that they are not only concerned with how your site looks but how it will work for you. How will people find you? How can you grab their attention and hold it long enough for them to contact you?
There is an abundance of info on the web about what makes websites work. Be sure to arm yourself with facts.