Brainstorming Website Enhancement Ideas

There are many ideas for web enhancement using technologies such as social media, content management systems, digital media (photo, audio, video), and ecommerce. Consider a few of these ideas when brain storming your next website development or enhancement project.  Here are the 20 most popular ideas for enhancing your web presence.

Your Website Design

Here are a few ideas for upgrading your website design to present a more customer-friendly experience and focused message.

1. Reduce Visual Clutter – Eliminate any design element (imagery, buttons, flash, flare) that doesn’t provide value to your visitor. For example, if you have a flash banner, ensure that the content displayed on the “slides” is of valuable to your customer or somehow improves usability.

2. Eliminate the Wait – Eliminate processes and activities that are unnecessary and/or prevent your visitor from obtaining the information they need quickly. This includes splash pages and loading pages (your visitors are highly unlikely to watch a progress bar increment from 0 to 100). Sometimes a brief load time is necessary, in this case, be sure to provide some valuable information to the visitor while they wait.

3. Eliminate Time Wasters and Distractions – Completely eliminate time wasters and distractions. This includes pop-ups and fancy navigation bell & whistles that occur when someone clicks a menu item. You don’t want to distract the visitor away from the content on the page or slow down the speed of your pages with unnecessary bells & whistles.

4. Simplify your navigation – Determine the most important topics of interest to your target audience. Your navigation should reflect those topics.

5. Answer Frequently Asked Questions – Most business websites can benefit from creating a frequently asked questions page. A F.A.Q. page can reduce the amount of time that your customer service team spends on answering questions that can be easily answered on your website. If you don’t have a F.A.Q. page, start by listing the questions you most frequently receive from customers and prospects.

Content Management System (Open Source … as in FREEly available)

Managing Your Content

A content management system is essentially a system that allows you to create, manage, organize, schedule and distribute your website content. One of the benefits to using a content management system for your website is the ability to maintain and update your own website content. There are many other benefits including scheduling your updates and the ease of creating RSS feeds for your content.

Here are 5 popular open source content management systems:

6. Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org)
7. Drupal (http://drupal.org/)
8. Joomla (http://www.joomla.org/)
9. CMS Made System (http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/)
10. Mambo (http://mambo-foundation.org/)

eCommerce

Enhancing Your Online Store

If you have an online store, there are many tools available that will improve your customer’s experience while shopping. Here are 5 ideas that are very effective in enhancing your e-commerce site.

11. Use Zoomable Product Photos – Using zoomable/resizable photos of your products will allow online shoppers to review the product closely. This may reduce the customer’s aversion to making an online purchase. (For an example, see http://www.magictoolbox.com/magiczoom/)

12. Display Multiple Picture Angles – Photograph items from multiple angles to allow the customer to obtain a complete view. This will improve their ability to make the purchase, as it reduces the number of unknowns (For an example, see http://www.scene7.com/)

13. Always Cross Sell – Providing links to related or coordinating items will allow your customers to quickly select coordinating/related items, as well as improve your sales.

14. Display Product/Service Comparison Charts – Comparison charts are beneficial in providing your visitor with an “at a glance” view of your product & service offerings. Be sure to only include related product/services on the chart (i.e. don’t compare apples to oranges). Also, pick the characteristics that are most important to the customer and most valuable to the purchasing decision process.

15. Brand Your Customer Service – After successful payment processing, take the customer to a printable receipt page on your website that details the order and confirms that their payment was successful. Also send an email receipt to the customer. If the customer closes their browser window prior to receiving purchase confirmation, the email receipt will serve as their backup receipt. Always include your logo, site name and site address on all correspondence with the customer. This assists in branding your site as a credible online business.

Photos

Online Image Management & Sharing Services

If you use your own photographs on your website, consider using an online photo management services to manage & share your photos. Perhaps you’re a photographer or have a business portfolio of your past work. One of the benefits of a using one of the following services is the ease of sharing your work and the ability to “tag” (describe) the photo. This allows you to further organize your photos into categories and easily integrate them in your website, blog or other social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook.

16. Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/)
17. Picassa (http://picasa.google.com/)
18. Photobucket (http://photobucket.com/)
19. SmugMug (http://www.smugmug.com)
20. Expono (http://www.expono.com/)

Feel free to comment or provide feedback if you’re using any of the above services or strategies.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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