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1. Emphasize the unique nature of your site and what it offers that’s of value to users. Stress how your services differ from those of your direct or ‘key’ competitors. This is one of the most important issues in homepage design, and one of the least followed of all the guidelines. Websites typically hide their offerings in generic “marketing blurbs” that make very little impression on prospective customers.

Remember: The average internet shoppers typically query search engines and will only look at the top few offerings for only 3 to 4 seconds before surfing beyond that range.  You have to ‘hook’ them at first glance.

2. Use a liquid layout, which allows the users to adjust the homepage size. Fight “frozen layouts” at all costs, it’s a worthy battle and one well worth repeating.

Remember: different users have different monitor sizes. People with big monitors want to be able to resize their browsers to view multiple windows simultaneously.  Don’t assume that everyone’s window width is 800 pixels: it’s too much for some users and too little for others.

3. Always use color to distinguish between “visited” & “unvisited” links. Knowing where you’ve been is only one of the three basic features that good navigation designs should support.

The other two are:

“Where am I?” and

“Where can I go?”

Remember: Navigational confusion results when designers disable one of the few useful features of a standard Web browser: having visited and unvisited links appear in different colors.  (Typically, only 1/3 of corporate homepages tell users “at a glance” which site areas they’ve already seen. And violating this guideline is particularly harmful for older users.)

4. Use graphics to show real content, not just to decorate your homepage. For example, use real photos that have an obvious connection to the content as opposed to using models or generic stock photos. People are naturally drawn to pictures and gratuitous graphics can distract users from the actual or critical content you want them to see.

5. Include a tag line that explicitly summarizes what your company does. In keeping with most advertising slogans, content-free tag lines abound. Once you’ve paid millions to get a useless slogan developed, it’s probably hard to accept that it won’t work for your website. Put the useless slogan in a graphic banner next to your logo, where it will be ignored. Then add a true tag line in plain-text format in the content area where people will actually see it.

6. Make it easy to access anything recently featured on your homepage. Users generally remember when they’ve seen something interesting on a homepage. However, unless that homepage lists recent features and offers links to them in the archive, users will never be able to find what they’re looking for on subsequent visits.

7. Always include a short site description in the window title. This is important for search engine visibility, so why not take advantage of this superior and cheap form of Internet marketing?

8. Don’t use a heading to label the search area; instead use a “Search” button to the right of the box. Now, this may seem to be a small point, but there’s no reason to label the search box if there’s a “Search” button right next to it. There is a simple design principle called, “less is more”, which says that extra elements in a dialogue not only distract your visitors from the salient points, but reduce their ability to understand an interface as well. (In other words, with less to consider, people understand more of what’s actually there.)

9. Give the percentage of change, not just the points gained or lost when presenting stock quotes. This principle not only applies to sites that provide stock quotes, either in the investor relations information or elsewhere. But with stock quotes, the general principle is to help users understand the relative magnitude of a change, and thus its true importance. (A same philosophy of design applies to presenting other statistics that change over time as well.)

10. Don’t be redundant and include an active link to the homepage on the home page itself. Never use a link that points to the current page. Typically, active links to current pages cause three problems:

If they click it, a link leading to the current page is an utter waste of users’ time. Worse, such links cause users to doubt whether they’re really at the location they think they’re at. Worst of all, if users do follow these no-op links they’ll be confused as to their new location, particularly if the page is scrolled back to the top.

Homepage links on the homepage typically result from using a universal navigation bar that includes “home” as an option. But when users are on a page that’s featured in the navbar, you should turn off that option’s link and highlight it in such as way that indicates that it’s the current location.

References in this article come from: Nielsen Norman Group, Useit.com

Any dope on the street can make a mistake without exerting any effort. To really wreck an e-commerce site requires effort. Here’s how to do it.

(Coverage of the ACCM conference continues at WebProNews Videos. Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Sure, the session at ACCM 2008 was titled “Maximize Your Web Catalog: Search Optimization, Content & Analytics,” but the real value comes from knowing how to completely make your site irrelevant to the engines, and thus to potential customers.

Matt Bailey, founder of SiteLogic, covered several topics where unary webmasters caused themselves and their sites unnecessary grief. Accessibility, for example, became a big deal for retail chain Target’s website.

Target made its site in a way that left it less than useful for sight-impaired visitors using screen reader software. Images and image maps lacked any alternative text a screen reader could use. That earned Target an embarrassing lawsuit from the National Federation of the Blind.

Failing to use redirects for changed URLs provides an easy way to send search crawlers into oblivion, taking your site’s presence with it. The 301 redirect says this URL doesn’t exist any more, Mr. Spider, you want this URL instead, forever afterwards. Temporary URL changes use a 302 redirect.

Then there’s inconsistent linking. Optimize those title bars to help avoid the perception that you’re presenting duplicate content. If you can hit the same page in different ways, search engines might decide to exclude all of its instances as duplicates.

URLs filled with useless unreadable characters present people with an unmemorable page. Fall out of love with icky URLs and make them something that a regular user recognizes right away, and sees its value. Don’t forget a nice favicon, either.

You may have tons of data available for a product or service you sell. Balance is the key. Too much information, like too many different products on one page, dilutes the presentation to the visitor.

If you really want to turn visitors into one-time arrivals, make calls to action obscure and unclear. Navigation that states what it does and does what it states keeps people makes it more likely that online shoppers, who frequently research products over and over before making a buy, will come back to reinforce their wants before making a purchase.

Bailey cited one task e-commerce site publishers need to succeed, and that’s analytics. “Number one thing you can do to increase your sales is use analytics,” he said, claiming over 70 percent of retailers do not use analytics. “If you are not doing analytics, you are losing money,” said Bailey. You don’t really want to leave money on the table. Do you?

With a wonderful pool of talent and Revolution Web Studios‘ top-notch management, our custom website design company is providing some of the best turn-around times for any website project.  We will hold your goals and objectives as our very own.  Combine Revolution Web Studios’ high standards with our high quality service and affordable pricing and your search is over.  Let Revolution Web Studios bring your idea to life.  We can and will make it happen.

By David A. Utter

About the author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Follow me on Twitter, and you can reach me via email at dutter @ webpronews dot com.