Come and visit us on the MBG stand where we will have some of these liitle gems for those of you who sign up to receive our e-newsletter.

Mmmm, tasty cakes!

Come on, you know you want one!

The Expo is at The Lights Theatre in Andover from 10am to 5pm on March 17th. Visit their website.

It is now taken for granted that an organisation will have a web presence of some kind. Even if this is simply a single web page with information and contact details, however, your website can do more than act as a virtual business-card. Because it is available 24/7, and increasingly on the move via smart-phones, your website could be seen by potential customers day or night and in almost any place around the world. Your website can act as an salesman for your products or services at any time and in any place.

Researching your customers can help you to work out what your website should look like and what information or functions it should have. When you understand what your customers want and need to give them confidence in your organisation it will help your website planning. Once you design and plan your website to fulfil their needs and to suit the way they want to buy the chances of them making personal contact or making a purchase are increased.

Identifying who your customers is important because once you know who they are and what they will be looking for on your website it becomes easier to:

• write the text on each page with them in mind,
• organise the pages so they can find what they need,
• include e-commerce or other website functions that they find useful.

Consider your products or services from the perspective of your customers, what do they need to know before they can buy from you? This can be difficult to put your finger on so try asking some of your existing customers why they buy from you. It’s an opportunity to find out why people buy from you that could really help your website plan. Identifying the benefit your particular products or service offers to your customers is the key to communicating that benefit to all the visitors to your website to increase sales.

It can also help to think about how your website visitors will access your website, are they likely to be at a desktop machine with plenty of time to browse your pictures and words, or are they likely to be using a smartphone with a small screen, possibly between meetings? If your customers are pushed for time they may not read all your text or appreciate scrolling through lots of images, although they may also know what they are looking for and will need specific navigation to specific pages to speed up the process. Customers at home may have more time to spend reading your pages and you can take this opportunity to include detailed specs and photographs.

If you have used the web to make purchases and to find information analyse what made you use the websites you chose to do business with. Where there useful features on the website you used? Perhaps there was a convenient way to pay. All of this research can be used to help plan your own website.

If you are selling products online it can is a good idea to make your site look as much like a shop as possible to help visitors know that you sell from the website. Include symbols to show what payment types you accept and make sure you have clear photographs and good descriptive text for each item. Make it obvious that this is a place to buy from.

Your customers need to understand how your website works, find it easy and convenient to use and it must suit their particular style of buying if they are to purchase from you rather than going to another website. That’s why it pays to understand your customer before you plan your website.

If you are planning an e-commerce website this topic is covered in-depth in the FREE Create Design Studio e-newsletter, sign up to receive it on our homepage.