|
There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to building and maintaining a website. One way I reduce overwhelm is asking myself: What is the goal of this specific page? (And it should be ONE goal per page. Minus a couple exceptions.) For example: The product page’s goal is to get the customer to Add to Cart. Or at least... That’s your goal. Your customer’s goal is different. They’re using your product page to determine if your product is the one they want to buy. To achieve your goal, you have to help your customer’s achieve theirs. This means the goal has evolved into: Convince the customer that your product meets their needs. (And don't feel bad about this, because your product should! You believe in your craft and the joy it could bring to your customers.) Every question about design should be based on that goal. For example:
Answering questions like these make it clearer how you need to build each page to serve your customers. Thanks for reading today! Sam wants to know what you're updating today to address a customer need: Have a great day! |
Using 10 years of design experience to help handmade businesses build websites into business assets.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of tailoring your website to be picked up and ranked by search engines (usually without paying). The rules are never explicitly published, but people learn them through experimentation and pushing limits. Once upon a time, this meant you could get a number 1 spot for a keyword by spamming that keyword in one giant paragraph at the bottom of your page, regardless of the rest of your content. The rules evolved and so did the techniques to rank. It was...
Most templates for content management systems (like Squarespace, Shopify, or Wordpress) are responsive. That means when someone visits your website on a phone or a computer, the website resizes so that it fits in the space available. (Once upon a time, websites would often redirect you to a mobile-only version.) A layout may be responsive, but it might not be the easiest to use. When selecting a template, I look for three things: 1. Quick loading speed. Mobile users are especially impatient,...
Internet customers have very little patience. If they don’t find what they’re looking for at first glance, they will leave. You can help yourself by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. 1. Look at your analytics. Somewhere you should be able to see a list of the most popular sizes (mobile and desktop) people are using to look at your website. 2. Choose the most popular sizes and look at your site in that size. Note: You don’t really need precise sizes, but knowing most of your customers...