The first sense your web site makes is absolutely critical to your e-business action. Studies claim to have alienated the interest span of the average web surfer. These studies point to a decrease in overall attention span from around 8 to 10 seconds several years ago to around 3 to 4 seconds today. Given the shrinking amount of time you have available to channel user interest, you have to make whatever loads on your page count — and count big.

Apart from a handful of exempt businesses, this means avoiding splash introduction pages, cutting out pop-up ads, and engineering your web site with 56K modem users in mind as your base customers. Battle tests your web site loading arrangements with different people. Do your friends and family wait for your page to load out of sympathy to you? Do associates praise your pretty graphics and large text sizes? If you are not getting objective info from your inner circle, you may need to subject your web site to third party testing. Graphic design studios, artists, and some other e-businesses which rely on lots of flash and style may put splash pages near at the beginning of their web sites to wow potential customers. This practice can be acceptable, provided that your clients use broadband technology and expect to be inundated with animations upfront. That said, you should still be sparing in how much animation you put on your web site.

Moreover, take care to make sure that your main page conveys concise, exciting, and articulate information about your product or your service. You don’t have to fill your text with exclamation points, capital letters, bolded words, and colors to get people excited. If your language in and of itself isn’t enough to move customers’ hearts and minds, it still won’t be enough once you’ve finished glittering it up.  

Finally, make sure that your site navigates well. Once you’ve gotten past that 3 to 4 second mark, you still must make a good second impression to retain visitor interest. Make navigation bars accessible and easy to use. Don’t put all of your text and/or images on your homepage. Include outgoing links, contact information, and a search bar for your site. Make sure that the first impression that your web site gives after it loads will be just as relevant to expert visitors as it will be for first timers.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 1:18 am and is filed under Business, Information Technology, Marketing & Advertising, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.