David Fiske Affiliate marketing & web development musings from Fiske Towers

I love tweaking my sites. The fun of it is making little changes and watching the effects.

Not all changes are good though. Most websites change regularly. For example, Yahoo Mail is launching a new website interface for it's webmail users. I have tried it and quickly reverted back to the old interface. Why?

People are afraid of change.

This is a big consideration when you build a website. You need to get it structurally sound before you start building else you run the risk of losing visitors - and search engines.
 
You see, if you build a page, get it listed in the search engines and then remove it, it takes just as long as it did to get listed as it does to get de-listed. This infuriates web searchers who could have found what they were after on your site.

On the other hand, some changes are good. Take the web's best known search engine - Google. Here is Google back in 1998 and here is Google now.

The interface has become easier to use and the index has become significantly larger.

So why am I talking about all this then?

It comes down to getting things right first time. And that is why I want to explain to you why I have constructed the site the way I have.

Here is Screenshot 4



The first thing to note is that the logo is on the left hand side. My visitors will tend to be UK based and hence will be reading English. This reads left to right and so we are effectively trained in doing this on websites. For me, right hand navigation is odd and should be used sparingly. I like to see shopping cart details on the right hand side of a store but not a menu. That should be on the left (in my opinion).

The logo is hand crafted using vector graphics. This means I can scale the logo up and down so I can create a billboard size image with the logo or a small pin badge with it on. Let's face it, if this takes off as I would like it to, this could be a business within itself. By the way, if anyone wants to buy the site for a princely sum of millions of pounds, I am open to any reasonable offer! After all, Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube!

There is a search facility on the top right hand side of every page. Sometimes on large sites it is easier to search for items rather than go through the navigation menu. I would like to extend this by providing an auto-complete facility that suggests satellite navigation models you may wish to search for. However, I need to ensure it works in most browsers and that it is accessible.

A bright blue navigation bar replaces the grey one and it is a drop down menu. As it is written entirely in CSS, it should work in most browsers. I know it works in Firefox and IE7 as I can test those!

The menu itself has had to be cut down slightly as those viewing in 800 x 600 resolution may not be able to see the bottom of the menu. This means menu options cannot be accessed easily . The menu therefore may be rewritten using larger drop down boxes to make it easier to use. One thing is for sure - I will keep the drop down menu as it saves so much space and allows me to keep the design clean.

Google AdSense ads appear underneath the page title (which is encased in a H1 tag for SEO purposes). You may have come across the heatmap that shows where most visitors to websites follow. I have constructed a very crude image for Compare Sat Nav below:



Most visitors read left to right, top to bottom. Therefore, they are more likely to click on things at the top and to the left. That is why navigation belongs to the left hand side and Google AdSense ads belong at the top. They are more likely to be noticed and clicked upon if they are at the top.

On the home page, the main content is split into two columns which link directly into the price comparison. They list sat nav models by manufacturer or retailer, depending upon what the visitor clicks on.

The reason I have put links here is due to marketing logic.

Once a person has read the page top to bottom, they need an action point at the bottom - a link or set of links to somewhere. This is why some people put Google AdSense ads at the bottom of the page. If a visitor fails to click an ad at the top, they will more than likely click one at the bottom if there is nothing else to do.

You may have noticed that there are no Google AdSense ads on the search engine pages. This is a conscious decision to attempt to encourage visitors to buy from one of my listed advertisers. It defeats the object if the visitor finds the cheapest place to buy a sat nav system from then goes somewhere else to the be redirected to the cheapest place.

The whole model is based upon the fact that visitors need a clear path to take them from a search to a retailer and on to a checkout.