A customers handbook on website design - 7 fundamental elements to be considered

So you engage in online business? Well, you may want to consider your website as the pivotal entry point for your customer which creates an everlasting impression in their mind. Also, you wish to foresee people spending money on the products/services that your website has to offer. Hence, it is considered dire essential for you to draw out a periodic audit to analyse the potency of your website design.

Humans by nature are advantageous due to their uniqueness. But when subjecting oneself to online buying behaviour, we all consider a few aspects with regards to who to trust and vice versa. Provided below are 7 fundamental elements that every business should incorporate in an online environment:

Ease of use

The website design should implement user centred design to accommodate easy navigation facilities. Customers are on the lookout for aspects such as product/service information, about your business, contact page and testimonials, if required. These pages by all means, should be most effortless to find. Furthermore, the font should be clear to read and understandable.

Clarity of content

Content with relation to web design should be of similar font as the headers and footers along with the call to action pages. Needless to say, this is applicable to each and every page on your website.

Credits

Primarily, the website should have its contact page tab placed prominently. The page by itself should provide all possible engagement routes. This can include a telephone number, email address, the physical address and in contemporary times such as these, a LinkedIn contact. Moreover, credits can also include testimonials for feedback quantified by a third party justification in way of ‘likes’ on Facebook, a tweet on Twitter and the likes of such. The more positive feedback your website garners from customer, the quicker the decision making would be for becoming the potential customers.

Uniqueness

This is purely website design based. If the outlook of the site lacks vibrancy and enthusiasm, you lower your possibilities of gaining fruitful returns. Do not make the mistake of following the masses. Do so, and you won’t have too much to smile about in terms of your online business.

Ability to leave feedback

Conversely, if customers don’t feel opinionated on your website, they would not stay with you for very long. If they do try to get in touch with you for any odd reason, and are not responded too soon, they would not want to engage with your business any longer and would surely not want to recommend you to anyone, thereby harming your goodwill.

Personalization

Always keep in mind that each and every customer is another person and remains unique only to him/her self. This suggests that all customers have their own depth with regards to expectations from the product/service that they procure from your website. Incorporating a touch of personalisation could make all the difference to your business. For instance, when sending out an email, do not address that person as ‘Dear Customer’. Rather, just going through a tad bit more to instil their name would make them feel special. Therefore, know your customers at a certain personal level and lay the building blocks from a lasting relationship.

Security

Last but not the least, all customers want assurance and re-assurance that their personal information uploaded on your website would remain confidential and surely would not get forwarded to third parties in return for monetary gains. Selling products and this sentence comes down to you having a SSL security in place. Security can attribute to a number of things as well. If you ask for email addresses, do let the customer choose if they want to be contacted for marketing purposes and if interacting with people on social media platforms, make sure that you would be discreet about any and all personal interactions, to name a few.

Certainly adhere to the above and rest assured, your business would yield very fruitful returns.