Importance Of Websites For Business And Customers - Essay Example

Web Designing Importance of Websites for Business and s In today’s fast paced world, almost every business needs to have an online presence in order to attract more customers and to make the business recognized all over the world. World Wide Web provides this facility to every firm, business or even an individual to design and create attractive and user-friendly websites for various purposes. Website is also a very popular platform for internet marketing. A number of businesses and companies use websites for marketing purposes. Holub (2005) asserts that “one of the easiest ways to help your business gain more exposure and potential customers is to have a professionally developed website”. Other than getting business exposure and attracting customers, a professional website also provides a lot of other valuable benefits to any business or a company. Some of these benefits include increased business credibility, increased volume of sales through attracting more customers, enabling a business to reach international market, improved and efficient customer service through online forums, and reduced business activity’s operating cost. What are the Important Factors of a User-Friendly Website? Talking about websites and their importance in the world of businesses, let’s get to know why user-friendly websites are more popular among users and the customers and how do they prove to be beneficial for the companies. The main reason for developing user-friendly websites is ease of interaction between the website and its users. If a company makes a website which is very heavy or complex in nature, it will not only waste precious time of the users but will also result in less productivity for the company. It is because customers are the main source of productivity for any company and if the customers do not get attracted towards a company, it can never achieve its desired goals and objectives. So it is very important for a company to be customer oriented. If a company does an online business, it should create such a website for product marketing which should be able to attract customers. And this goal can only be achieved through creating a user-friendly website. There are a lot of factors and issues which should be considered while planning to create a user-friendly website. These factors include appearance of a website, navigation and controls, access to pages, layout and design, and download speed. If anyone of these factors is sidelined during the process of website development, the basic goal of creating a user-friendly website can never be achieved. Appearance is one of the most important factors to be considered while creating a website. Appearance of a website means how it will appear in front of the users. A website should never be boring in its appearance because a user will want to explore it further only if it appears to be interesting and appealing to him. Colors, design and layout play a vital role in attracting the customers to a company’s website. Home page of a website should contain all attractive information regarding the products and services provided by a company. Appropriate links should be provided on the home page for the guidance of the customers of the company. “Provide plenty of links on your home page, giving visitors an overview of your web sites content and choices” (Duell 2003). On the home page of a website, only those links should be added that are related to the customers’ requirements because the users open a website only for their own interest and purpose. Such links should be added in the website that are directly related to the products and services provided by the company because users are much more interested in a company’s products rather than clicking any irrelevant link. There should never be any broken link present on the website. Some links do not get opened when clicked and result in decreasing the online credibility of the company. It is of key importance to check each and every link in order to know whether they lead the user to the desired information or not. Another important factor is navigation of a website. Duell (2003) asserts that “navigation is essential to keeping prospective buyers at your site”. Website designers always keep in mind that the users do not always explore the website by actually typing the name of the website. It is also possible that the users may open the website through a search engine while searching for any specific product or service and they click a link during the search which may lead the users to the website of the company. So it is important to make the navigation easier and make the website available on every search engine. Designers know that users do not always make a special search for the products and services provided by any company. This is because users are mainly concerned with their desired products and they normally use the search engines for this purpose. There major concern is product, price of the product and warranty. They just write their requirements on the search engine and it is the job of that search engine to look for such companies which meet the desired specifications of the customers. So access to desired web pages should be made easier. Inside navigation of a website is also important as it guides the users directly to what they look for. Such controls and links should be added which make the desired pages of the website easily approachable by the users. Another important factor is loading speed of a website. Most of the users want the website to get opened in 5 to 6 seconds. So if a site gets a long time loading, the user gets exhausted and closes the site without waiting for it to get opened. Bizinger (2005) asserts that “in order that your visitor sees your web site it must be loaded pretty fast”. For the purpose of speedy loading, website designers usually reduce the number of images from the website because images often result in slowing down the loading process of the website. Typography is also an important factor in creating a user-friendly website. Text available on the website should neither be of very small size nor should it be written using a font that is difficult to be read by the users. Size of the letters plays an important role in creating a user-friendly website because not all of the people can read smaller fonts without using glasses. Less than 11-point font is very difficult to be understood by the majority of people. Pages should also be shorter in length. Many website designers avoid writing long texts on the web pages because they know that long text is never appealing to the customers. Customers want to save their time by reading short texts providing them with the desired information. Use of multimedia is another valuable technique used to create an attractive and user-friendly website. Most people like to hear about the company’s products and services instead of reading the web pages. Multimedia not only helps in attracting the customers but also plays an important role in increasing the sales of any specific company. But the audio or video clips should never be too lengthy because the lengthy clips result in slowing down the loading speed of the websites as larger images do. Company’s contact information is also a very essential part of any user-friendly website. It should be present on the home page of the website under the contact information tab. Customers of any company may try to contact the administration regarding any matter. So proper contact information should be provided in order to satisfy the customers through promptly replying to their messages or queries. How Website Developers can Ease Decision Making by Users? Website designers can ease decision making by users through creating customer oriented websites. It is important to note that customers always look for their desired stuff on the internet, so it beneficial for any company to create such a website which can facilitate the customers in decision making process. The main objective of developing a customer oriented website is to increase sales of the company by providing proper guidance to the customers. If a company gives value to its customers by providing quality products and services to them, it will return in increasing the profitability of the company and this objective can be achieved by creating user-friendly and customer oriented websites. Website designers can perform this task really well by including purposeful and direct links on the website which can redirect the customers to the products and services provided by a company. Web developers, in collaboration with the company’s management, understand the needs and desires of the customers in order to create a customer oriented website with the purpose of facilitating the customers in decision making process. Another important way is to include a tutorial in the website in order to guide the customers regarding the use of the website. That tutorial should be able to tell the customers what steps they have to take during the process of selecting, ordering and making the payment of any specific product. While creating a website, it should always be kept in mind that customer is the key to attain the objectives of the company. So if the customers find value and care for them in the company’s website, it will not only return in increase in the company’s profits but it will also be helpful in creating a long lasting and durable relationship between the customers and the company. Most of the web designers make a special forum on the website with the purpose to coordinate with the customers and get their views regarding the products and services provided by the company. Through those forums, customers can also share their viewpoints which are very beneficial for other customers if they face any problem while making decision whether to buy a product or not. The forums provide a great help to the customers because the customers get to know the benefits and the drawbacks of any specific product that they are planning to buy. Another factor to be considered while developing a website is that of product description. Website designers should always give the product more importance than just describing the company. It is because customers are more concerned with the products and services instead of the company. Product description links should be placed prominently on the home page of the website in order to ease the customers’ decision making process. So, these were some of the very important factors which every web designer should consider in order to facilitate the customers in making decisions regarding the products and services provided by any specific company. References Bizinger, D 2005, Make Your Web Site User-Friendly!, viewed 01 April 2010, Duell, L 2003, User Friendly web site, viewed 01 April 2010, Holub, S 2005, Why Your Business Needs a Website, viewed 01 April 2010, Read More