LESSON 3:
CREATE YOUR WEBSITE MARKETING CONCEPT
Once you have determined your target market & conducted your Keyword Research Study then you are ready to create your website marketing strategy and design your website layout concept. The most important thing to remember when designing your concept is:
Keep your eye on the goal!
All design elements should support the goal of your website- which is to sell your product! Don't fall into the trap of getting attached to design elements or sentimental photos. You can ad these later when you are making the big bucks!
LOGO
Your logo should be designed first before starting the design of the website as the look of your logo will determine some the your website design elements. You can also just start with a basic graphic header for the top of your website using a nice font and a stock pic.
FRONT PAGE
You have only a few seconds to impress a new visitor to your site before they decide to move on to look at other sites or are intrigued enough to give your page a second look. To avoid customers bouncing off your website you need to make it immediately apparent to them what you are selling and how it can benefit them. There are some essential elements that must be included to make this happen.
The front page should be minimal in design and should direct your customer to take action. You should limit your front page design to feature one to three focal points. A front page that is too busy will frustrate visitors and they will move on.
Feature the main products & services plainly on the front page. Use simple graphics to direct the eye to make this clear. Put a direct link to these best sellers on the home page.
Front page content should consist of short sound bites of text and the content or photos should let the viewer know how your product will positively improve their life.
Avoid pictures that are irrelevent to your products. All photos and graphics should portray your products or convey the how the person will feel when they have purchased your product.
Don't use a fancy splash page with no description of your product on it unless your company already has a recognizable brand name and you want to make an image statement. Most viewers don't have the patience for this and you will waste valuable real estate!
Don't use flash elements just to have something fancy. These elements can be disrtacting if not done well and some viewers won't use flash. Any motion on a website is very distracting and your readers will be looking at the pretty graphics instead of looking at your products for sale.
Don't use audio recordings that play automatically. Give the viewer time to SEE what is on your site.
NAVIGATION
The navigation on your website should be simple and easy to use. Keep in mind the viewing tier level when you design your navigation. Don't use too many drop down or pop-up boxes. Some viewers can't navigate these easily and will become frustrated.
INSIDE PAGES
The inside pages may have a different layout than your home page. The navigation may also look somewhat different. Keep as many elements as similar as possible from page to page so that the viewer doesn't need to rethink each page. Each page should have its own web page marketing strategy.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
You will need to add all the elemenets of SEO including: Page names, page titles, header tags, and meta tags. These are all a part of your marketing concept.
CONTENT
The content on your website consists of the photos and the text. Your text is your marketing content and should be composed by a content writer. This is what sells your product! Content is King! Keep it simple and use all the rules of basic marketing.
THE OVERALL DESIGN
The overall design will have an effect on your product sales. The design does not need to be fancy to sell your product but it must be clean and easy to use
TO GET YOUR DESIGN STARTED GO ON TO LESSON 4:
SETTING UP YOUR WEBSITE
