How To Make A Winning Website
Written on September 2, 2010 – 4:49 am | by Guru
We’ve all visited websites that just seem to draw us in and want to stay. We have all seen others that make us want to leave, even before we’ve given them the opportunity to tell us what they have to offer. What is the difference between the two?
Cookbooks may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but they make a good example of how to design a good website versus a bad one. Let’s take a look at a couple of sites and see what makes one stand out from the other.
Cookbooks are a good example because there are so many of them, although it’s a specialized niche. You can find cookbooks for every conceivable type of cuisine or diet. When a person goes to a cookbook website, especially if it’s their first visit, they are not going to want to waste their time browsing for the one they want.
A good webmaster knows this. His homepage is going to be light on text. It is going to get to the point within a couple of short paragraphs. He wants the readers to be drawn immediately to the cookbook they’re looking for, so the emphasis on the homepage will be on the index.
He will have the books all arranged into easily identifiable categories. Those visitors who are looking for cake decorating books will intuitively know which category they will find them under. Since cakes are desserts, the general category might have a link button that reads, ‘Delicious Desserts.’ If the reader is looking for Mexican recipes, the homepage category might say ‘Favorites from Around the World’ or something like that.
The website that you run from will make you scroll down the page while they explain in detail why their website is so wonderful. When you want to know how to decorate cake, you don’t want to have to scroll down a sidebar that lists each title in alphabetical order and hope to find one that sounds like it might be about what you’re looking for. On the homepage, this is a very bad idea. Keep it short and categorize your offerings.
It’s always a good idea to offer a search bar if you’ve got a lot of products to offer. However, don’t rely on it. It’s there for the people who know what they’re looking for, but remember, they probably found your site after doing a search on a big search engine. They should feel like they’ve already found what they’re looking for. Another reason not to make the search bar too prominent is because a person looking for cake decorating designs may be led to just one book. You want to offer them a variety of unexpected choices.
An eye catching design, short and concise content and an easy to navigate site are the three basic ingredients to good web design. These will keep them on the page and keep them coming back for more.
Tags: cake decorating, cake decoration, cookbooks, desserts
