Latest from MrBead with Free Shipping & How to Design Your Site's Front Page

To go to the MrBead store click MrBead.com  or  MrBead.co.uk

Click a picture below to see one of this month's new beads.  To receive free shipping enter "frontpage" (without the commas) in the box at checkout, and click "Redeem Coupon".  Use NOW - as expires Thursday 19th August 2010.  Only for use at the above stores and cannot be used with any other discount or eBay.

See us in the UK during September and October - for bead show dates click here.

New Beads:

How to Design Your Website Front Page 

In the last newsletter we covered How to Build a Website with an Online Store to Sell Jewelry, see here - now you will learn how to design and build your front page to take customers to the site.  This is important as it’s the first thing a potential customer sees, and you only have a few seconds to convince them to stay before they click away to the next site.  With your front page:

1.    The user must be able to understand what the site is about in under two seconds.

2.    Design everything so it can be scanned by the eye quickly.

3.    Keep it very simple – no fancy or small type, music or flash.  It must load fast.

4.    Make it easy for the visitor to e-mail or contact you.

5.    Use a simple navigation structure with limited choice – less is more.

6.    Avoid long sentences, paragraphs or pages.

7.    No spelling or grammatical mistakes and only good quality pictures.

8.    Include a call for action.  Like “To Buy Click Here” or “E-mail Now!”

9.    Use similar colors and type styles for harmony.

10. Design a nice logo – this can be an image.

How to physically construct your front page will depend on your web building confidence.  If you have no idea, then you can either pay someone to design and make for you, or you can start with a pre-built template supplied by most web hosts.  One company that designs good sites is WebArtDesign, click the link for details.

Template
A template for your whole site will ensure each page is linked professionally, and that every page keeps the same design, logo, and other sections.  It saves you a lot of time.  Free templates are also available within the program Front Page. 

Keep in simple
Less is more, but it’s hard to design clear and simple.  One example is the front page I designed below at http://www.MrBead.com:

Structure links
Rather than clutter your front page, build links leading to other pages to expand a choice.  For instance on the front page above, I placed a picture and link for Stand Beads - click this and it goes to another page with a list of all the different types of strands.  To include all on the front page would be obstructive. 

Logo
Design your own logo - it looks professional and gives trust.  There are various programs that make logos, some are free, Google search.  Or experiment with different fonts and colors with your word processing program. 

My favorite is WebStyle from Xara (click for details).  However, if you choose to use a non-image logo, bear in mind that it may look different to viewers depending on their browser and settings.

Sell words
For headings, item descriptions, or copy, use words that sell.  For example see the list I wrote for myself to use at www.mrbead.com/words.html.  Make descriptions and photographs as detailed, accurate, and interesting as possible.  Photographs should all be sharp, cropped and contrast boosted.  Edit everything you write, and use the spell check and thesaurus on your word processing program.

Next month: How to Market Your Website.  The above is from the new book soon to be published: How to Make a Killing Selling Bead Jewelry.

  
To view all are old newsletters click here   
To go to our MrBead store click MrBead.com or MrBead.co.uk