Designing a pleasing website is tough

The web based marketing industry has matured in recent years. The average commercial website is far more sophisticated than it was say 5 years ago. Also, the big companies are driving the cost of advertising through the roof which makes it a difficult business to operate.

Since there is no product exclusivity and many of us are marketing the same products there are only a few ways to make a connection with the customer. The internet is also the great price leveler. Since comparison shopping is so easy prices are forced to be very similar and price is going away as a way a vendor can differentiate themselves.

That leaves us with only customer service and the design of the website itself as the key drivers for an online business.

We have had many interestng discussions about what makes a good site and what do people want. For our design, we have deliberately avoided the complex style so many sites use. The multi-column, highly fragmented page, with specials, and deals, and competing information that offers so many choices it overloads the eye is offensive from our perspective. We call it a tabloid strategy.

We have deliberately tried to make our site less frantic. Rather than presenting all possible choices, we have created a large number of pre categorized and pre sorted pages which are organized in the way people actually look for information and helps them focus in on what features they are looking for in a product. By simplifying the navigation process we let the customer pay attention to the products rather than how to get around the site.

We also organize the information in a consistent way so that moving around the site becomes intuitive fairly quickly and we present information in a standard format which aids the comparison between items. We also provide a "Lights I Like" notepad which can hold items of interest and it follows along as a person shops so they don't have to remember what it was they were looking at earlier.

Time will tell whether these approaches are really what appeal to people but its our story and we are sticking to it.

Wayne Eskridge