There are many different philosophies on the best way to design a website so that it works in selling your product or service. Some favor a highly structured and guided path approach where a site visitor is encouraged at each step to take the next part of the sales journey leading to a sale. While others prefer a more open approach that makes everything easily accessible and always is only a single click away from being able to make a purchase.
Easy Navigation
When a structured sales approach is taken to the extreme then some sites make it impossible to easily go to other parts of the site. This gives a potential customer a single choice, buy the product or leave the site. Is this all or nothing approach really what you want your customers to be presented with? No matter the style you prefer by ensuring a navigation bar is always available then your customer can get more information, check other products and be comfortable about their purchase decision without the take it or leave ultimatum.
Make Buying Quick and Simple
When a customer makes the decision to buy you must take advantage of that decision immediately. It is important to have the ability to purchase a product one or at the most two clicks away. There is a limited window of opportunity and forcing a customer to click through pages of information before that can make the purchase is frustrating and can lead to them reconsidering their decision to buy.
Product Information
There are many different ways to display the products or services that you are selling and it is important to have a concise product description and a picture so that a visitor to your site can quickly identify what they need. This approach allows them to then decide if they want to buy now, look at other items or get more information. The precise way that you structure this and layer the pages will depend on how many items that you have but with any more than a handful it is recommended to have thumbnails, identifying information, price and a link to buy the item. A product page for each item can then give more information and any relevant links.
If there are too many products to easily fit on a standard page then having an easy to navigate set of product sections can make finding the right item much simpler. It is important to make it as simple as possible to find the product and to move from one product to another quickly.
Clear Pricing Information
One of the major mistakes that many sites make is to try and keep pricing information away from the customer until they start the purchase process. There is a short window of opportunity to keep the interest of a potential customer and there is no valid reason to not clearly display the price of your product.
Almost all customers will have a price in mind that they are prepared to pay and by having clear pricing information and a button that they can click to make the purchase you have the best opportunity of making a sale. If your price is not competitive then hiding it will only make it even more difficult to sell the item.
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