If your site isn’t easy to navigate, your customers will get confused and confusion does not lead to happy shoppers or to sales! So let’s avoid confusing our website visitors.

1) Make your site easy to navigate and intuitively clear where to find things. Is your site easy to navigate? It might seem easy to you because you are familiar with where to find everything. But you need to get the perspective of someone who doesn’t know your website or your products (just like the new shopper who comes to your website for the first time). Use what I like to call the “Grandma Test.” Ask your Grandma, or someone else who is not technically savvy to look at your home page, and to try to make a purchase. Watch where they run into confusion or hesitate. This will help you identify where there are problems or potential problems. Ask friends or family members to look over your site for you and let you know how quickly they are able to find specific information like how to contact you, how to place an order, or your shipping policies.

2) Shopping Cart. If you are selling products, you need a shopping cart. Do not expect customers to email you to place an order. First, email is so unreliable these days you may not receive their email. Second, customers expect a professional business to have an easy to use, secure shopping cart on their websites. Make your “Add to Cart” or “Buy” buttons large and easy to find. Also be sure you have a clear “View Cart” or “Checkout” button available. It’s frustrating for customers to add an item to their baskets, continue shopping, and then not be sure how to get back to their carts to checkout. Be sure you do a “test” purchase from your website at least monthly. That way you can catch any problems in your order process and make sure it’s working smoothly.

Next week… Making Your Website Work For You! Part 3 of 7, Bells & Whistles

Is your website running as smoothly as it could be? Here are eight important areas to check your websites function and professionalism.

Compatibility: Is your website compatible with all the major search engines? Test it on as many browsers as you can, and do a quick check at http://www.browsershots.org to see what it looks like in other browsers and on other operating systems.

Complete: Is your website complete? Be sure there aren’t missing pieces or incomplete pages.

Clean and confident: Your design and layout should be “clean” and project a confident voice, never talk down about your projects or your business. Owning a small business is nothing to be ashamed of! You can offer fantastic products and fabulous service to your customers. So do your absolute best and be confident in that.

Focus Drawn Immediately to Product/Services: What do you want your shoppers to see? Should they focus on a crazy, busy background? Only if your background is for sale. Otherwise, you want the shoppers eye to be immediately drawn to the products or services you offer. Make sure your header area and graphics are a reasonable size and load quickly so they don’t take over the focus of the page.

Clean HTML Coding: This is important for compatibility, accessibility, and search engine rankings, too. Check your code at http://validator.w3.org

Valid Links: Are there any broken links on your website? If so, fix them! Run a free check here to help you http://validator.w3.org/checklink

Quick Download Time: Visitors will not wait long for your page to load. If it doesn’t come up quick, they’ll click away without taking time to browse. Avoid this by being sure that your images are optimized to load quickly and that your code is clean and error-free. Be especially carefully with flash or animated elements.

Consistent Brand and Voice: Keep in mind your target market as you write your website and use a consistent voice throughout your website. Also be sure that your branding is consistent throughout the pages of your website, your products, your emails, your sales invoice/packing slips, etc. Match your logo, your fonts, and your style so it’s easy for clients and potential clients to identify any piece of your business, marketing, or sales materials.