You can put together the best website anyone has ever seen, but if it is not user friendly it will never be effective or convert sales. Here are 8 tips to creating a user friendly website.
Privacy policy. You and I are not lawyers. Thank god, but you need a little of the mumbo-jumbo for this. Try some of the free generators out there. I have used DMA Privacy Policy Generator in the past. I like it.
Contact Information. A no brainer right? Not really. People forget this one all of the time. Especially first time ecommerce sites.
Search box/site map. Another no-brainer, but, regrettably often forgotten.
Analytics. Once you're running you will want to know who, what, and how long, about your visitors. Google has an easy tool to use, but your hosting service should offer this, too.
RSS Feed. This lets customers who have signed up know about what is new and happening on your site. This helps to bring window shoppers back for the buy.
Consistent Navigation. Really, this one is easy to mess up. Make sure your menu stays the same on all pages of your website.
SEO Content. Your pages should be optimized for 2-3 keyword phrases per page. Do not just throw junk in there to do this. Always write for people, but keep the keywords flowing at a 2-4% density.
Social Media Share Button. Twitter is on fire, Facebook and MySpace are crazy popular, so why not take advantage of that. Make it easy as pie for people to share your site with their friends.
These tips my sound like fluff, but quite a few people skip one or several of them and make it more difficult for their site to succeed. Do you have any other suggestions?
Excellent article,Jerry. Very informative!