3 Marketing Spices Every Business Should Have

Designing good web pages is a very challenging process. That is in part due to the fluidity of the medium the design is constructed upon. 

In other words, just because you want something to look a certain way doesn’t guarantee it will. When you design a brochure for print, you know that everyone has pretty much the same capacity of seeing the design as it was constructed.

Not the same for the web. Why? Because…

when you view a website on a monitor screen, the number of variables impacting the viewing experience rises exponentially. Here are some of them: screen resolution and size, browser characteristics, monitor calibration and operating system. All these variables distort the way the website is seen on the screen.

One of the most important issues for a web designer is deciding what the central or focal point of a web page should be and how much space should occupy.

In order to determine the middle of the screen (aka. The focal point of attraction for any web surfer), divide your screen in 8 rows by 10 columns. The area of intersection between row 5 and column 8 is your focal point.

Plan on putting there the most important piece of your web page. That could be a picture of a product you want to sell, a Call to Action of some sort or simply a block of text you really want the visitors to see and read.

Check out ibm.com or dell.com and you’ll see that all the action is happening exactly in this area.

Here’s what you can do to spice up this important area of your web page:

• Use strong, contrasting colors. This is the perfect place to layout a form with a strong call to action.
• Put a picture; lifestyles are best to be used here. Please stay away from the same dull executives shaking hands over the latest deal. Select one person instead, facing the action or the content. Never have the subject looking directly at the visitor; it will distract him.
• Use bigger text for headlines, bigger than usual or even different fonts. Make them stand out next to regular body text.

Some other quick tips to focus your visitors attention on your webpage while maintaining functionality:

• Have contact information on every page. Don’t let visitors wonder or search for that information, not even for 5 seconds. You risk on losing them. Even if you have a “contact us” page it is still better to post your contact info on every page without making them click on a specific page.
• Put testimonials on the right hand side of the page, where the eye is usually trained to look for this information.
• Use the right column to put newsletter links, registration options and other call to action.

 Claudiu Geanta is a successful online business owner and founder of Design by Satori Inc. & ProIncome Marketing, LLC. He teaches businesses how to build an optimum online presence. He is also and accomplished web designer and photographer. You can follow him on twitter.

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