Improving Home Page Design - 4

So we are designing (or redesigning) our site, and looking at it through the eyes of our visitors. Which means our site is not about us or our company!

Get clear who your visitor is!

Do you have different sets of visitors? Customers, prospects, investors, the press? One way to figure this out is to survey your existing customers - find out who would visit and why. You could look at existing website statistics. (If you are not aware of this Google analytics is free and tells you more than you could possibly want to know about your traffic!)

Now map out the psychological process each group would go through that would result in a sale or lead.

For instance, write down all the questions and concerns they would have, the objections they might bring up, the information they need. Then sort this into a logical progression.

The idea is to consider all this before you write your content and before you decide on your navigation through your site. The key is not to leave this up to chance - but to lead your customer from one step to the next as the process unfolds.

Makes sense - yes?

Tomorrow - specifics!