Struggling with a good web design.

and how much does it affectoverall conversions?

[chodges84]

Hi,

I'm building a website for the shop i work in to get them online, and hopefully expand there business. I feel they could attract a lot more, as there prices are very competitive even oline. We have struggled to find many items cheaper than ours.

However, I'm struggling with the design side of things. I have installed a good shopping cart, and got SSL and everything scriptwise working, but I cant seem to get a good front end design. I have tried a template site, and some of them are exceptional, but they dont suit the business (i.e. we are not a web hosting company, which all the templates seemed to be aimed at). Can anyone give me any suggestions (and not the 'use a web designer' line). We got a reasonable design today, compared it against a rival site, but it looked rubbish. Although our prices were half of what theres were. Will customers mind that? Will they go for the higher priced item from the good looking website, or the lower priced item from the not so nie website?

I got a design that I am very happy with for my own website, but I cant seem to do it again. I must have just got lucky.

Many Thanks

[treeline]

Take a look around the web. Find a few sites you admire that also sell something. Use them as your guide. Study why you like them, what makes it work. Change enough that you're not copying them.

There are a lot of sites emulating amazon, yahoo and other successful sites. If design isn't your thing, don't reinvent the wheel.

[lgn1]

From my experince, don't waste your time on producing beautiful web design. We went that route and it did not improve sales one iota.

Just make sure that the pages are fast loading, and the site is clean and well organized.

Spending an hour deciding if periwinkle is more pleasing than royal blue is a total waste of time.

[Essex_boy]

Make sure your images are as small as possible and teh overall design is clean and quick to load with text being easy to read.

Then youll see your conversions jump

[benihana]

to add to the good advice above, dont try to 'over-design'.

just Keep It Simple....

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

If you are trying to sell something make the website as easy and as quick to load as possible. Forget about Flash and all that nonsense. It doesn't have to be beautiful but it has to make it clear what you are selling and it must have a hookline that makes people want to explore it further.

Think about it. If you are like most other people, when you are looking for something on the Web you just want to be able to find what you are looking for as quickly as possible. Flash and fancy graphics just get in the way.

I know that when I am searching I am not too concerned about the website that delivers the information. As long as it is professional looking and business like I will feel happy about using it.

The other thing to consider is that when you choose a fancy design style you may like it :) but many others may think it is horrible :(

Go for SIMPLICITY over STYLE.

[plumsauce]

clean and well organized

IS

a beautiful web design

[jbinbpt]

Ask the customers that are now converting how the site works for them and what they wanted to see but didn't.

A short followup email after a sale usually gets a high response rate.

Site design should keep your customer demographics in mind. How web savy are they? Are your customers older? Younger? Study whom you are trying to sell. It makes a big difference.

jb

[Bonusbana]

A beautiful AND functional design could increase conversion rates. Not just because people like to watch beautiful things, but the visual design also reflects the quality of a brand, and therefore how trustworthy the company behind the products is.

A nice & comfortable looking design (not flashy "cool") could also help you gain visitors and pagerank because people might link to you because of the design only. And that means a lot - long term.

Design is not just complying with visual trends, it has so many more functions. Focus on useability, loading time, search engine friendly code and structure first, then add a visual shell that fits the brand.

That said, a "cheap" design could be more beneficial if the products actually are cheap. A honest design is always the best - dont try to fool your customers with a top-notch trendy design that sells low-budget products. Or the other way around.

[chodges84]

and therefore how trustworthy the company behind the products is

This was the thing I was worried about. This company has been around since 1973, which I will display clearly for people to see. Also I think adding a phone number somewhere prominent will help.

The current page is very quick to load, and clean as well.

My opinion is changing as content is being added, It actually looks good when I am browsing the shopping catalogue, and seeing some content there, not just white (which is all there is on the unfinished home page).

As the site is yet to launch, I think we could put it live, and work from customer feedback, and then we can look at redeigning it. This is actually what I did on my own website. I actually hated the old design, but customers still placed orders, and that was a very fast website as well.

Thanks.

[Lorel]

validate, validate and validate again and by that I mean use more than one validator.

[sincraft]

Here's my two bytes :)
-In the past 2 years, I've done over 20 websites that sell things online. When I asked them after project completion, if you HAD to complain about something regarding the website, what would you pick?
--Most common answer: It's just not as flashy as they would hope.
My followup question:
-If you had to compliment the best part about the website, what would it be
--most common answer: it is easy to navigate, fast, clean, and interesting.

Second followup question: How much was my quote in comparision to other companies.
Most common answer was 1/2!

I also asked for company names that quoted them prices...check out their 'sample clients', and most of them were ugly, not flashy at all, hard to navigate.

Although I do believe beauty is a GOOD thing, if I have 3 menu's to pick from that take me to the same place, I get frustrated. If I have to wait for a site to load on dialup, I close it, go back to my other window with my yahoo results, and pick the next website.
I like flashy. I really do. But I've seen it all. When I am shopping or looking for information, it is VERY important to me, and most of the people that I poll: that I get to the information that I want.
THE MOST ANNOYING THING IN THE WORLD! ARE POPUPS! Go ahead, put a popup on your information site, and I am GONE. Unless I REALLY need that information and your website has ALOT of what I need.
Next, unless it is a ecomm site, I make sure all my site designs are able to be viewed in almost all browsers and yes heeh including WEBTV! I have several test systems that allow me to verify these results. And many people have complimented me on not only the speed, and ease of browsing of my designs...but that they are 'pretty' also. :0 SO I must be achieving something with my methods.
How many times do you goto a website, and they have wordage in flashy graphics that you can click on in some areas, and not in others. Annoying, and a HUGE BANDWIDTH hog.
How many times do you visit a website that has what you want, and you bookmark it because it is easy to find the information? I find myself bookmarking websites that are clean and fast, even before I find the SPECIFIC information I am looking for after doing a search for a general topic.
I'm not the greatest at understanding SEO and SEM, but I am learning. My strong points are 'the most bang for the buck' and keeping the customer on the website, and turning around sales. I have one website that has almost a 20% conversion rate. THAT IS UNBELIEVABLE! Why? Because the stuff is a good price, yes, but also...because the site was fast, showed them what they wanted and a TINY bit more, and looked professional. Trust me, we polled them. :)

S

[asherburne]

I can't believe some people say design isn't important.

<snip>

Design that looks 10 years old immediately makes me think the company is unreliable and archaic.

This may not be true, but I'm not comfortable buying online unless the company looks like it belongs online.

That means design is a huge factor. Here are a few tips to keep your page from looking like it's from the early 90's

- No clip art (it's hideous)
- No flashing graphics or flashing text (it drives users crazy)
- Take it easy on photoshop effects (beveled edges, huge glowing outlines, etc.)
- Minimize your color palette. Don't make every bit of text a different color. Use complimentary colors when you choose your palette.
- Choose a style. Are all your corners rounded? Does everything have a thin border? Do you use simple blocks of color, etc.
- Be consistent. Your pages and graphics should all look like they belong together.
- Keep it simple. Organize your links. Keep the text short and sweet (but offer detail on item pages). Don't make them scroll too far.

Those are just a few ideas. Somehow, there are tons of stores out there (that actually do sell things) with horrible designs. Don't be one of them. Look professional.

[edited by: lorax at 6:51 pm (utc) on Jan. 13, 2005]
[edit reason] No personal URLs please [/edit]