Web design and listing design – what works?

People who spend a lot of money on website design sometimes put a fair amount of money into marketing research to determine what design features will end up getting them more conversions (sales). If you are observant, you will find that in certain industries, certain types of web design predominate. It would be reasonable to take that into consideration if you were designing a site in that industry.

A lot of the research which has been done is available for free or a small charge. For instance, we know things like the first place someone looks when they land on your page (upper left-hand corner). We know that the more clicks someone has to make to find what they are looking for, the more likely they are to just give up. We know that the more information you have on a page, the less likely they will immediately see what they are looking for, even if it is right there.

So the question is, how is your listing design working for you?

The issue is that while there are numerous different types of design in use (and apparently many of the different types successful), what matters is whether a design is working for you to make you money. How can you measure that?

Well, if you did it yourself—especially if you are not particularly skilled—are there errors on the page? Is it broken? Can you tell? Things like typos, grammatical errors, broken code, non-working buttons, and missing images need to be fixed, first of all. If you can’t tell by looking, have someone else look at it to see if they see anything that you missed.

Do you have a statcounter on the page? That will help you see how much traffic you are getting.

But if you’ve had a design up for a long time, it’s pretty much impossible to tell whether making changes would help you or not. It would be a mistake to simply assume that it will or won’t.

If you get a new design, put it up and WATCH CAREFULLY to see what happens. It’s not about your tastes and whether you like it. It’s about whether it inspires your customers to make purchases.

You may find your traffic and/or sales increase. You may find them drop off dramatically. I have heard several girls put up new designs, pleased as all heck, who took them down really fast when they found their business died off.