More on Web Design
Posted On: 2011-08-25
Last week here on Rated Hot ... and then again earlier this week on Porn Resource ... I basically talked about web design and some of the things we could and should be doing to ensure that we maximized our chances at making a sale and today I want to carry that web design theme on one more time.
Good web design is one of the fundamentals that you have to get right if you want to make money in this business. You can have the best damn offer for porn surfers on the planet ... you can tease them with hints of the hottest hardcore that they have ever seen ... you can give away just about everything ... but if your basic web design sucks then you're not going to make much in the way of money.
So what more can I say about web design? Well there are four things that we should always keep in mind when we're building our websites and that's what I'll talk about today.
Don't piss off your surfers
Ok so we're not going to give everything away for free ... that's a given ... and that's sure to make our surfers a little grumpy. Most of them don't understand that we're not a public porn service no matter how much we might look like it.
We want people to buy rather than get it for free while they want to see everything for free ... so right there we've got our surfers off-side. But we don't want to make that any worse by offering them links that don't show them what we promise or making them stop and think about where they are and where they might want to go.
The more frustrated a surfer becomes the less likely he is to want to buy what we're selling.
Use conventional layouts
In lots of ways this flows on from the previous point. Surfers have an expectation of what a free porn site should look like so don't get carried away with your site design and drop surfers into a site that looks nothing like what they were expecting.
Keep the site design simple and make sure that the design doesn't wander too far from what the average porn surfer is used to and you have a better chance of converting the surfer into a paying customer.
Use buttons that people understand
I mentioned that earlier in this loose series but it's worth repeating. Make sure that you use text in your links and on your buttons that people understand with no room for doubt. Think about what you're saying when you add text to a link ... are you giving a surfer a reason not to click the link or are you giving him no choice but to click the link?
For example if you're asking the surfer to agree to something are you using text that says plainly "I agree" or are you asking him to click a link that simply says "OK". One is very definite while the other is a bit vague ... a bit unclear ... and distracted surfers need to have everything set out in plain language or they may choose not to choose.
Lead the surfer to where you want him to go.
Now there are two ways to lead a surfer to where you want him or her to. You can trick the surfer into going to where you want them to end up ... but then when they realize that they've been fooled your chances of making a sale are not all that good.
Or you can design your site and incorporate marketing text in a way that will engage the surfer and he or she will happily follow the yellow brick road through your website and end up at your sponsor in the right frame of mind to buy what you're selling.
If you choose that option then you have to remember to keep the path simple ... surfers will need big, simple, visual clues to take them through to the sponsor so keep your marketing text short and simple. Use power words that have a subconscious impact on the people who are on your site and get them focused on finding what you want them to see.
Marketing our products used to easy ... throw up a banner or two and everyone would want to buy what we were selling. But those days have gone and they're never coming back so we need to accept that fact and get ourselves focused on learning all the marketing tricks that are out there.
We also need to make sure that the designs we use for our websites are as focused on making sales as we can possibly make them.