Your website is not a lot different than your brick and mortar retail store. A lot of thought is given to the physical layout of your store to make sure your customer’s shopping experience is the best. Aisles, product placement, signage, and displays. All these elements make it easier for your customers to navigate through your store and find the products they’re looking for—and hopefully a few more. Your website can do the same thing. It is a virtual version of your physical location. It’s not hard. Just take a little time to think about your customers and what they expect to find from your site.

Understand How People Read on the Internet. Who Moved the Cheese?

One important distinction of web customers is they don’t read-they scan. Generally speaking, when your customers come to your site, they are on a mission. They want to scan your site and confirm they will be able to find what they’re looking for quickly. Understanding how web users ‘read’ webpages will help you determine the layout of your webpages.

Research has shown that people read, or rather, scan, webpages in an F-shaped pattern. This is important to keep in mind when you’re thinking about placement on each of your pages and items on your pages. Physical retail stores take a similar approach. They strategically place items in key spots, knowing this is where their target shoppers will look. Kids’ items are on lower shelves at their eye level and within their reach, “featured” items are placed at the end of aisles to grab attention and encourage impulse buying. Being consistent in your placement for your return customers is important too. If you have dedicated real estate on your site for specific offerings and have trained your customers to expect to see them there, don’t make them wonder who moved the cheese.

Helpful Hint: Visualize the F-shape on your current homepage. Are you finding the information you want your customers to find? If you’re promoting a specific item or know what your customers are looking for on your site, make sure they can easily find it!

Use Headings and Subheads. These are your retail store displays. On your homepage, you’ll direct attention to your most common/important products or services. Grab their attention, offer a little bit of details and provide them with a link where they can access more information about that product/service.

Helpful Hint: Use researched keywords in your headings and subheads. Find out how your customers are searching for your products/services and craft your messages using those keywords.

Before the Scroll. Don’t make your customers scroll for information. Most of the time, they won’t bother. Would you? Provide the most important and relevant information before the scroll.

Helpful Hint: Avoid using large images or headers that take up most of the real estate on your page. While you may think the photo or image is a work of art, odds are your customer just wants to access information quickly. Use your space wisely.  Your most popular services/products should be prominently displayed above the fold.

Easy Navigation.  How frustrating is it when you can’t easily find what you’re looking for?  Or, what you’re looking for isn’t necessarily where it should be or where you were told it would be? (Remember the cheese?) Make sure information is easily accessible to your customers. They’re not on your site for a treasure hunt. They’re there for a reason. Think about why your customers are visiting your site and make sure they can easily find what they’re looking for. 

Helpful Hint: Take a stroll down the “aisles” of your current website. Become your customer. It may seem obvious, but many times businesses fail to put themselves in the shoes of their own customers.

Visit your site as your customer. Is your site easy to navigate? Can you find what your customers are looking to find? Are you grabbing their attention? Give your customers an enjoyable experience-- not a frustrating one. Don’t wait for the announcement... start cleaning up your web aisles before someone falls... onto your competitor’s site.