8 Steps To Creating A Sticky Website

A well designed website is important to attract more and more prospects coming and being interested in what you have to offer. Websites with poor designs are still being created and they tend to clutter the Internet everyday. Nevertheless, not every website should be filled with fancy designs either. If you are selling a product, you should use a website which focuses more on texts - direct sales letter, you need to learn proper copywriting. As for other category of websites like galleries, community websites, personal websites etc, well designed graphics tend to pull more interest. If you want to have a user-friendly website, here are some guidelines: 1. Keep it simple Nothing's more frustrating than not knowing where to go on a website. Keep everything straight forward and understandable, aim for simplicity. You must always remember that if people are not feeling good navigating on a website they won't be interested in staying longer. 2. Provide clear navigation Set a template for your website. For every page provide the navigation links back to the previous pages. This lets your visitors navigate throughout the website without hassle and is able to return easily without needing to click on the back button all the time. 3. Make your links clear One of the ways to keep your website simple is to make the links clear. For any picture icons or links, make sure you insert the text title down as well. It may seem boring but keeping it simple will be the best thing to do. You can use Photoshop or other graphic design software to embed the texts in your picture. This way, you save your visitor's effort in trying to know where to click next. 4. Tell them what to do People are lazy and would not want to think when they are given the choice to do so. If you tell them step by step on what to do, they'll thank you for it instead! Let's say you want them to order a product, sign up for your e-zine/newsletter or contact you - tell them, and provide an easy way for them to do it. 5. Fast loading pages You need to make sure that your visitors will not need to wait for a long time in order for your page to load. Try to always minimize the time for people around the world who are still depending on a 56k dial-up Internet connection. 6. Avoid long forms As mentioned above, people try to avoid things that need them to use a longer time or more effort on. If your intentions are getting an opt-in, asking for just your prospect's first name and primary email will be the best - standard opt-in form. 7. Color Always remember to keep your website simple. There are many people who like graphic design very much they put down lots and lots of fancy eye hurting colors on their web pages - don't! The most popular discussion boards have only simple designs, because they suit the adults. Websites with fancy colors and effects might be favored by young people, but the older ones will try to avoid them most of the time. 8. Texts Not every font that you can see will be shown on the other's monitors. Try to keep away from special fonts that people don't usually use. Nevertheless, there are several standard ones like Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, San-Serif, Tahoma and Georgia which you can feel free to use. Try to space out your contents as reading spaced contents wouldn't stress your visitors eyes too much, which makes it comfortable for them to stay longer on your website.