By Bob Wilson
DESIGN
How important is web site design? The page you produce or have built for you will create a lasting impression on your visitors. It will help establish you as a professional with a commitment to excellence.
Your visitors first impression is immediately established the second they click on your site. If you wish to establish friendliness, use a friendly design, whimsical, fun. For a more dedicated business site, be more conservative, informative, technical. For an athletic site, possibly more liberal use of colors, sports figures, icons.
How and what you wish to appear to be will determine the direction you will take with your design considerations. You can design your own site if you have the creative ability. You can use templates to establish the theme of your site. Templates are available on the Internet, free of charge for personal or non-profit sites. Some templates require you to pay a fee if they are used on a for profit site. Unfortunately, most templates look exactly like what they are…templates. Most template produced sites look somewhat amateurish and may give the impression of not too much commitment to their business.
You may choose to use our design services. We will supply you with a complete site, designed to your specifications. This could be just one page, a ten-page site, or even a hundred-page site. We will provide you with complete design specifications, site constructions, and assembly and even host your site on the Internet. You will be able to visit your site while it is being built. We maintain space on our servers for you to see how your site is progressing. We use software that will allow you to make notations, corrections, even highlight important points, right on your web pages as they are being built. You will be in direct contact with your designer. You will be able to communicate by mail, email, telephone, or fax. Your concerns, additions, and changes will be dealt with quickly, sometimes even while you are on the line.
We will provide you with a Site Mapping Tool to help you design your site. This mapping tool is very helpful to visualize all the aspects of your site and what you want to include in your site. It will help you lay out your site navigation as well as prevent many omissions in the planning stage.
This tool is free of charge and available to our customers to use for their own benefit in planning other items in their company. An example of a site plan using this tool is here.
If you allow us to assist you in establishing your site appearance, we will be in an excellent position to provide you with a detailed cost estimate for your site construction, hosting costs, promotion and maintenance charges if you require them.
EVAULATION
Your may have a site that is not performing the way you expected or were lead to believe. We can evaluate the site and make suggestions based on our experience. We can help you make decisions on other requirements to meet your needs.
We provide a brief visit and evaluation at no charge. A written report will be provided, possibly along with a couple of suggestions. For a detailed, in depth evaluation and report, a more thorough study will be required. An hourly rate will be established along with a budgeted amount for the total report.
The report will be written in a language that will be understandable and you will be able to give it to any web designer to make the required changes. Please contact evaluation@trimarinerinternetservices.comfor more information.
NAVIGATION
Navigation is a very important part of your design objectives. The largest single fault that will discourage visitors on your site is poor navigation. More visitors leave a site in frustration because of poor navigation that any other reason.
If you are selling an item on your site, your buy signal should be no more than three clicks from your home page. If your customer has to drill down through your site for 10 pages before they arrive at the “Buy Now” signal, many will leave before they get there.
EMAIL ADDRESSES
If you are selling on your site, you will want to collect email addresses from every visitor. Most buyers will not buy the first time they visit your site. The average number of visits before purchase is 7 visits. There are many ways to collect visitors addresses. We can provide the forms and programs to automate address collection so it may operate unattended 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Many customers will have already decided to buy by the first visit, but need to feel confident about the purchase before they put their money down. By collecting the email address of your visitors, you can stay in touch with your potential customers with reminders of a special, reduced rate, or other inducement to purchase.
Your Email list will develop into your most valuable sales tool. It is a common fact that once a customer has bought from you and is satisfied with your product, they will be inclined to purchase from you again. It is far easier to sell to an established customer than it is to sell to a new customer.
Repeat customers will visit your site an average of 3 times before they purchase again. They already know how reliable and trustworthy you are so they do not need to assure themselves that you will deliver the product as promised in your sales pages.
YOU WILL BENIFIT
We are more that happy to discuss your needs, either for immediate use or in the future. Contact Trimariner Internet Services now to open a dialogue that will benefit you many times over. Click here now to contact us.