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July 1998
Image
Smooth Surfing
Don't forget your Web site's importance to your overall image
Your Web site can be as important to your image as your catalog or advertisements.
In their book Marketing Aesthetics(The Free Press, New York City),
Bernd Schmitt and Alex Simonson offer some tips on designing a site that
will show you at your best:
- Avoid using too many icons – they can confuse your visitor. Don't
embed icons in pictures – they can be difficult to find. Be sure your
icons fit your Web site decor – color scheme, graphic style and overall
look.
- Visitors jump all around when they visit your site, and the search
engine they use may deliver them not to your front door (your home page),
but to a side door (a subsequent page). For this reason, each page of your
site should repeat some identifying information from your home page and
provide a clear link to it.
- Your Web page is an element in your overall marketing mix and should
be graphically and thematically consistent with the other branches. Your
other communications – catalogs, radio ads and print ads – should
refer to your Web site and vice versa.
- Test your site using different Web browsers. Colors and type fonts
can appear in different ways depending on the browser the visitor uses.
Even worse, the type can get mixed up – with the wrong text appearing
under an icon. (Talk about lousy first impressions.)
- Refresh your site regularly. Visitors will return only if you keep
providing new material for them to peruse.
Copyright © 1998 by Bond Communications.
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