Web Site Design

10 Secrets of Online Selling

by Paul Graham

In a print catalog, "production values" refers to the quality of the paper and printing processes used, the number and quality of images, and the care taken with graphic design. High production values are critically important in catalogs, which have to convince consumers to buy based on a few sheets of paper.

Production values are even more important on the Web. Consumers will not buy from an amateurish Web site.

Most of the people who visit your site will still find the idea of ordering online unusual. I have been buying online for three years, and I still find it a little unusual. So your site needs to inspire visitors with confidence. It should say that yours is the kind of company that does things right, and that if I order something from you, it will be a good experience.

Of course there is no direct connection between the quality of your site and the quality of your company. A company could have a brilliant graphic designer and lousy products. But usually there is a connection, and that is what visitors to your site will assume. If your company is unable to put up a good Web site, then it seems natural to assume that your company cannot deliver good products or services.

The most extreme case, of course, is when your company does not have a Web site at all. Occasionally I go to look for information about some product, but find that the company either doesn't have a Web site, or has a site with nothing in it. Not impressive.

Almost as bad as the empty site is the site that looks amateurish.

In contrast, take a look at Despair.com. Here is a site that says, we mean business. What makes a site say that? The same thing that makes a Ferrari look like it means business: good design. On the Web, good design means good proportions, appropriate typefaces, clear layout, and color combinations that work.

Overall the most important feature of a Web page is the organization. That is what visitors will notice first. It should be possible to "read" the structure of a page at a glance. A high quality Web site looks clear. A badly designed site looks haphazard.

Of the elements on the page, the most important are the images. A Web page consists of text and images, and everyone's text looks the same, so the difference in production values between good sites and mediocre ones depends almost entirely on images.

By images I do not necessarily mean product images. I mean gifs and jpegs, whether they are product images, display text, logos, button bars, bullets, or what have you.

To start with, better Web sites usually have more images. For example, they tend to have button bars at the top of each page, to brand the site and to aid in navigation. And instead of displaying

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in screen text, they often display as gifs. Text rendered as a gif can be antialiased, meaning you don't see jagged edges. You can use any font, not just whatever the browser has, and you can also get 3D effects like bevelled edges and drop shadows, which (used sparingly) make a site look richer.

When I say that better sites use more images, I do not mean that they use more k of images. Big images take a long time to download, and that is the kiss of death in an online store. In a top-quality site, images are the seasoning, not the foundation of the site. Use small, punchy images that will carry a lot of the surrounding area.

In particular, avoid the common mistake of putting a huge image on your front page. By all means put your logo on the front page, and in fact on every page, but make it download fast. Your logo is not what your customers came to see.

They came to see your products. But don't throw full-size product images at your visitors until they ask for them. Sophisticated sites begin with a page of smaller thumbnail images, which visitors can click on when they want to see more.

If you don't use thumbnail images, your section pages will be too slow.

Make your product images as high quality as possible. Consumers won't buy from an image that looks like a badly lit polaroid. So have a professional photographer take your photos. Images shot with a top-quality digital camera look brightest, but you can also scan transparencies or even scan images right out of your print catalog.

If possible, try to make the background color for the product images either the same color as your pages, or transparent. Product shots look better when the object seems to sit right on the page.

Finally, don't make spelling mistakes in your site. A few of those will undo all the other work you've done to make your site look professional.

Text copyright © 1999 Paul Graham. Feel free to reproduce any of this text on your own Web site, so long as you reproduce it verbatim, and include this message. For any other use, please contact the author. Yahoo! and Yahoo! Store are trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.