Building a Successful Website

AMERICAN EXPRESS MERCHANT SERVICES BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL WEBSITE A negative website experience can dissuade customers from contacting you, making a purchase, or visiting your place of business. So how can you make sure your website is optimized to draw customers in and not turn them away? CNET Review's Senior Editor of Digital Editing, Lori Grunin, reveals the key elements that make a website successful, and the common mistakes to avoid. Below is her advice on how to make sure your customers' online experience is an easy and engaging one: 3 BLUE SHIRT Use quick links to specific categories and/or Make use of filters and search capa bilities for the products you are selling so that your customers can easily find them. popular products in the left-hand navigation, or broken out with big images/buttons right in the middle of the home page. Fit as many results on a single page as possible to minimize the number of pages the shopper clicks through. 5 RETAIL WEBSITE Avoid Flash or any other fancy ways of displaying product information since it can cause for difficult page navigation. Exceptions might be video for showing how unusual or complicated products work. Make sure your shopping cart is on the right side of the page and dynamically updated when users add items. Pop-up blockers make the pop-out shopping carts a bad idea. ADD TO CART Don't load the page up with copy like "share this Use as few steps as possible for check out to "Buy" or "Add To Cart" seem to be the universal CTA on shopping, right next to the product description. product on Twitter", but do ma ke it possible to keep users from abandoning their shopping quickly email or share a link to the product. carts. 10 Shipping costs, restrictions, and return policies should at the very least be clearly linked from the left or top of the page. If shipping costs vary with the product, an optional estimate of shipping costs should appear right near the product price. If the cost is fixed it should appear in the dynamic cart. Don't force someone to create an account before they can order or mislead theminto thinking they need to. You should be able to save all the information in one-click to post-hoc create an $$$ account as an option. LEGIBLE LEGIBLE Restaurant sites need to be more mobile-friendly than most, which means that The menu page(s) should be no more than one they should be quick to load and the information should be relevant. Fonts should be simple, legible, and high contrast, so they are easily readable on a phone. click away from the home page with a clear way to find it. It too should be mobile friendly. MENU APPETIZERS SANDWICHES RESTAURANT WEBSITE URGERS While providing a PDF menu is fine, you want your menu to be a straight web page. If it's a really big menu, you need anchors to jump to clearly delineated sections. No pop outs. Most desktop browsers block them and they don't Include an easy way for customers to share your restaurant's menu by including email or social translate well to mobile. sharing capabilities. 8 $14 If you offer delivery, the menu should be more Include food items with descriptions, even if it's a common dish. Show prices. Highlight specialty options like vegetarian, for example, and notate common allergens. detailed thanjust a list of food items so Use images of your own food and never use stock photos. If you host parties or events, display photos of the venue. customers know exactly what they're ordering, especially if you use a delivery provider like Seamless or GrubHub. LUMBER If most of your business requires personal contact, put it right on the homepage. Don't bury contact and location information in the site. If your products or services are unique, put a description of your business upfront on the Have easily findable search box and filter tools to make it easier for user navigation. homepage for those who may not be as familiar. CTA B2B WEBSITE People expect the navigation either on the left-hand side or along the top of the page. Fly-out menus can be confusing as they can Whether you're selling products or services, your call to action should be front and center and live somewhere in the middle top third of the home page. take a few tries to master. 9. aff asd asdf Use a Web font server. It allows for a custom design and the ability to format it suitable for your audience. Avoid bizarre fonts and tiny text sizes because they are difficult to read and can be distracting. 9. 10 For images, get a professional photographer to take photos of your place of business, Avoid Adobe Flash videos or audio that plays automatically on your home page. It can be incompatible with mobile devices and can cause for a poor user experience. Avoid any content that's not central to the purpose of the site. You don't want people landing on the page and then struggling to find the information they need. employees, or other things that convey your corporate culture. Every image should convey information about who you are and what you do. AMERICAN EXPRESS © 2013 American Express Company. All rights reserved.