The way you design your web site affects your visitors' online
experience. As each visitor to your site is a potential
customer, the easier they find your web site to use and the more
they enjoy being on it, the higher the chance that they will
make a purchase.

Therefore, a well designed web site really CAN boost your sales!

In this article I'll share my five favorite web design tips to
help you increase your online sales.

Tip 1: Choose Your Colors Carefully

The colors that you use will determine how your web site comes
across to your visitors. Dull colors will make your site seem
plain and boring whilst overly bright colors can make it seem
chaotic and unprofessional.

Red and Yellow draws the eye in. Therefore it can be a good idea
to use these colors for banners and adverts that you want your
visitors to focus on. However, use these colors sparingly
because they cause eye strain which means that visitors won't
want to look at your web site for long periods of time.

Tip 2: Avoid Slow Loading Web Pages

The amount of time that your site takes to download is critical.
If it takes too long to download, you'll lose potential
customers who can't be bothered to wait.

There are things you can do to speed up how long your site takes
to download. Images and media are the worst culprits when it
comes to slowing down your loading time. I advise you to avoid
using any kind of multimedia on your web site and if you want to
use images, try and keep them small and to a minimum.

You should also define height and width in all tables and
graphics as this aids download time.

Tip 3: Make It Easy For People To Find Their Way Around Your Site

Your site's navigation should be as simple and as
straight-forward as possible so that people can find what
they're looking for easily. Don't lose sales because people
can't find what they want.

Put a link to your homepage on each page on your web site. This
will help visitors who didn't enter your web site via your
homepage to find their way around. You can simplify your
navigation by making every page accessible via two links from
your homepage and no more than three links from any other page.

Tip 4: Make It Easy For Visitors To Contact You

Place your email address, or at least a "Contact us" link,
clearly on every page. If people have to hunt around to find
your contact details, chances are they'll get fed up and leave
your site without buying anything.

Tip 5: Make Your Sales Copy Easy To Read

Chunks of text are off putting and are therefore unlikely to get
read. This means that if your well-worded sales pitch is written
in long unbroken paragraphs, it will go un-noticed.

Use space and bullet points to break up text in order to
encourage people to read it.