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Sacrificing Design.
By Rik Tairea
I'm in the middle of building a new website (at the time of writing
this article). When starting off I go through a simple design
process of planning, rough sketch design and then actual design
followed by the implementation of adding the content.
This is a pure sales site designed to present information and
adcopy on the product(s). When I design a sales site, my aim is
not to dazzle a customer with the coolest, latest and hip webpage
around, I just want to make them buy.
In order for me to achieve this goal I sacrifice huge jaw dropping
graphics and pretty design for total function and usability (but
I still make sure the site isn't butt ugly).
With a sales page I want to make sure buyer's want all the necessary
information they want and/or need about said product, then add
some adcopy to provoke a click through to a merchants page, which
in turn will produce a purchasing action. Then I have to optimize
the product page for the search engines, concentrating on keywords,
phrases, density, tags and good distribution of pagerank (for
Google).
With that all done, I also have to make sure that the site is
easy to navigate, so a good linking structure is something else
to consider. Finally, I have to make sure the page loads at a
good speed so I can't go overboard with graphics, plug-ins and
code bloat (not everyone has a cable modem).
Now with all those variables to consider you could try and go
for the awesome eye-catching design, but in this case I thought
it was best to sacrifice design and go for function and usability.
Don't get me wrong, my aim was not to design something boring,
but instead go for a simple and nice look.
So here's what I did :
- made a simple logo (5kb).
- used 8 graphics for site navigation (9kb total).
- 1 graphic space filler (1kb).
- 3 special link graphics (4kb total).
- external cascading style sheet.
- didn't use too many tables.
- limited use of javascript.
- no 468 x 60 banner ads (used 120 x 60 instead).
- optimized product images to reduce size.
This meant graphical impact is not too great, but there is enough
graphic presence to make the site look pleasant. By using external
CSS, limiting javascript and table use I don't have to worry about
code bloat and there is enough text to cater for search engine
optimization.
Average page size including graphics = 38kb
Average load time @ 56.6kbp = 10 seconds
This is my personal opinion because I haven't let anyone else
see it yet, but I think I've achieved the simple but nice look
I was aiming for. Time will tell on that one when it's ready to
go, but I'm positive that it does it's job of selling the product
and not scaring away a potential buyer.
I like the fact that this new site has a clean look and is easy
to navigate. I could have gone over the top with the look but
I don't see the point, in this situation I felt that sacrificing
design was the best approach to take.
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The above article was written solely for Groundzero and may not
be reproduced in anyway on print or other media. This article
was written by the webmaster, creator and owner of this site.
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