The Importance of Site Layout

Making your site useful to your visitors has many benefits. The main goal of all ecommerce websitesis to convert visitors into actions; i.e. sales, information requests, joining online groups or communities, or other ecommerce actions.

The method in which you present your content can be the very difference between marketing success and failure, and identifying mistakes early on can prevent the loss of visitor trust and confidence.

Identify Your Audience

Knowing who your visitors are and what information and content will be useful to them is the key factor in your websites marketing success, and failure to deliver that content to your visitors is just that, failure! Common approaches in designing the right layout are as simple as viewing your competitor’s pages, making notes on how content is presented and then creating a fresh and easy to navigate layout. 

Once you have a potential layout the best advice you can get is from family, friends and trusted colleagues. Ask them to review your layout and give you their feelings on the usefulness, easy of navigation and overall quality of the content. With this powerful information in hand you can then fine tune your layout to be of maximum use and value to your site visitors.

 Making your Offer Stand Out

Your marketing offers (actions) should be prominent and wrapped around your content in a meaningful way before the first page fold. If you are selling lawnmowers and guarantee the lowest price, that information will have more impact and be more useful if you include a price comparison of your competitors. Other helpful methods in marketing products and services are features and benefit comparisons. If you offer the same product as a local competitor, describe the benefits of choosing you over the competition. Your marketing offer should also be offered again at the bottom of your page.

Get to the Point

Many websites fail because they waste time in making their offer to their visitors. Most visitors already have a general idea of what they want or need, and are simply looking for the best price, or quality of services offered. Your home page is the starting point for your marketing offers, and should provide easy to understand options for every visitor. If you sell multiple products or services then your layout should include navigation options with descriptive content. It is also a good idea to develop landing pages for sites that market a large selection of products or services.

Sites that market a single product or service should be quick and to the point with their marketing offer. Your title text should be straightforward and descriptive, followed up with reasons to act or buy now. The urgency of your marketing offer will help to continue or increase the momentum in the sales or marketing process. The most common sales or marketing urgencies are limited time sale prices, and bonus or complementary goods or services. Creating an urgency to act or buy now can help to induce visitors to complete your desired actions, but don’t be pushy in your approach, let the urgency to act or buy now be the force in your offers.