The importance of a professional design for your e-business or blog - Building your audience’s confidence

Aug 8th, 2007 by David Murphy-Colonna | Scroll down for comments

In many of articles on CashBulge we stress the importance of content, skills, and services for blogs and E-business’s. Yes these are the back bone of any blog or E-business, and will drive the majority of your traffic and revenue.

One thing I would like to touch on though, is not only the importance of design and formatting for your online business or blog, but also the professionalism and official look and feel of your site.

Sure there are many ways, you can format your site, with keywords, and SEO tactics, which are very important, because these are ways you get the customers to your site.

But once the visitors arrive, you want them to stay there, and keep coming back for more. You need to send the right message to your them. You need to instill a certain confidence with your customer/viewer. You can will this confidence by having a professional look and feel to your website.

Here are some things to think about when trying to achieve a professional feel to your E-business or blog.

Think of your E-Business or blog as a face to face encounter.

I don’t like to generalize, but I am going to. Most of us are materialistic and stereotypical when it comes to real world encounters whether in business or social situations. So lets face it, the average consumer is not going to do business with a shady person on the street, unless they know what they are doing and are experienced with that type of business.

We need to look at our E-business or blog the same way. Just think about it, if you are beginning to learn about a particular, product, service, or idea, you want to talk to someone who is a professional or expert on the matter. Your expertise is shown in the content of your site. But you also need to look the part as well, because people tend to obtain more attention to visuals then anything else.

Think of your visitors first encounter with your site as a job interview, you want to be well groomed, look sharp, and well spoken. After taking a look they can decide to “hire”( continue to use your site,) or “reject,” (decide not to continue using your site.)

Phil Dunn, of QualityWriter.com, interviewed on the E-biz radio show Podcast, uses a perfect example of an audio equipment sales website, that uses language as if it were dealing stolen merchandise off the back of a truck. This may be the type of business some people like to deal with, but the majority do not.

With a little reworking of the site’s design, and rewording of its sales pitch, the site became more professional and instilled a certain confidence it in its customers. Hence, boosting sales and visitors to the site. So send the right message by presenting yourself like you would a real live business world.

Make your customers feel welcome.

Once visitors feel comfortable with something, they will stick too it, just think about the websites/blogs that you visit day in and day out; you are comfortable with them and the way they present information, so you visit them regularly and support them.

You can make the customers to your site or visitors of your blog feel welcome with both the language you use as well as the site’s design. Although I said you want to send a level of professionalism with your look and language, you don’t have to be so uptight and commanding. you do not want to be too commanding.

Especially if you are selling a product, do not bark your terms of services at them, this is a huge mistake and may scare potential customers away. You can just as easily present them in a polite way, giving your visitor different options.

Give the consumer/visitor freedom to browse around and feel comfortable with your language and site. With a blog this is especially easy, break things down into layman’s terms, and link useful information from other sites, this will make your site rather resourceful to “new students” to a certain subject.

Spend the extra money and time on design.

Although you may have a tight budget in the beginning stages of developing your blog or E-business, it is definitely worth it to spend a little extra money on the design of your site. A well design site instills a certain confidence in its visitors. You will definitely want to be able to design a good logo, which you will be able to establish a branding from. Not necessarily a brand or an LLC, but you can become more known and consistent with a well designed logo. A good logo can highlight your expertise.

People will start to recognize your logo and you can hyperlink it easily in forums and while using other advertising schemes, you will be remembered instantly. Like I said before, think of your blog or E-business design as a real business. If you separate yourself with a well designed logo and site people are more apt to remember you then, with a logo made from MS paint and a poorly designed site.

Design and professionalism send a certain message to visitors of a blog or E-business site. A well designed site will promote confidence in its visitors and show a sense of expertise and “officialness.” You will be able to start a brand, establish yourself, and become known and recognized much quicker. So once you establish good subjects and content for your blog or e-business go the extra mile for design.

There are many sites out there that will design a logo and website for you at some affordable prices, so the expertise and know how is out there, just shop around. Soon, CashBulge will be offering services in website design and monetization strategies that you may want to look into, so check in throughout this month.

*The Ebiz Podcast I linked above have many resources on running an E-business, especially Ebay stores so be sure to check out there other material.*

David Murphy-Colonna posted this article under Blog Improvement on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 8:00 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or trackback from your own site. View Technorati Linkbacks.