Web site designs generally evolve in certain stages over time. Inexperienced on-line business owners and web designers become fascinated and enthralled with flash movies, Java script, animation, and all the other more popular “bells and whistles”of website design. They frequently implement website design tips and strive to create “the coolest” looking web site they feel will appeal to their target audience.

Unfortunately, what often happens is this they fail to realize customers may become irritated with extraneous flashy and noisy features after they’ve see them several times. Instead of enticing web traffic and potential customers, all those extra flashy features may actually be distracting, rather than attracting traffic and potential sales.

More importantly, if the web site has not been optimized, customers may not even be able to find it on popular web search engines. Web site owners should implement some method to monitor web traffic and test to see if certain added features optimize, or reduce, traffic to their web site.

Avoid the “Dreadful Four” website design pitfall.

Many web designers fall into what I call the “Dreadful Four”. By avoiding the dreadful four you will save yourself a great deal of time and money.  Here are the stages:

Stage #1 - Style Over Substance

The first stage is to design a site that will visually impress the CEO and any business partners or investors. This is the one that ad agencies all like to see.

Again, this will be one of those “flashy” websites with all the bells and whistles out on full frontal display. The object of this style is to visually impress. It’s always a visually appealing site to see; but it is all style, and no substance.

Stage #2-Designing for Online Visibility

This stage usually occurs at around 3 to 6 months later when reality hits home. The new web site has likely gotten rejected by several major search directories. It may not even be indexed by the search engines and everyone is in a panic because the company’s market strategy projections are failing.

This is when the web site’s owners finally admit something needs to be done or else; and they don’t want to continue to lose sales and traffic. The company’s owners likely decide now is about the time to hire a professional on-line marketer to promote their site.

This is also the classic moment when gullible web owners get hoodwinked by “doorway page” companies. They somehow are able to cleverly convince web site owners their beautifully designed site couldn’t possibly be the problem causing low site traffic.

The web owner may be dismayed that Yahoo rejected their website, or if accepted, it was listed in the Yahoo directory without a description next to the company’s name. So desperate web site owners fall for bad advice.

Ad agencies and doorway page companies will never admit the truth to their clients. Truth being-they didn’t design or write an effective web site; to admit that would mean losing thousands of dollars in business.

Stage # 3 - Designing for Your Audience

By the time website has progressed to stage three, chances are the owner has spent an exorbitant amount of money for flashy web site designs and various marketing strategies.

It should start sinking in by now that the web site owners did not design or write an effective Web site for their target audience.

Typically what happens is the web site owners will bring in a usability expert. The usability expert will analyze potential problems and present various solutions.

Hiring a search engine marketing expert to help with search-engine friendly design templates early in the web design phase, could have saved the company thousands of dollars in on-line marketing costs.

Stage #4 - Web Site Redesign

After all the previous unnecessary time, trouble, and expense, the web site owner has a usability and search engine visibility analyses performed. The web site will now be designed for optimum performance like it should have been from the beginning. The web site owners finally have an effective web site.

An optimally efficient website must be written, coded and designed for user friendliness as well as search engine visibility. These sites are the ones generally getting the most traffic and resulting sales.

Important Points to Remember

Always design with the customer in mind! Any e-commerce website should be geared toward its targeted audience, not the web owners or others’ personal preferences.

Remember color can be important. Professional designers have been trained in the psychology of color. Some colors like red may be a real “no-no” depending on where they are placed.

Successful sites look streamlined and professional, not overly done and flashy.

Find out what your targeted audience wants. Understanding what your target audience wants is crucial to your business success.

Invest in professional business tools such as site statistics software and reporting from site searches. These can tell you exactly what your visitors are looking for and your site’s content and marketing strategies can be adjusted accordingly.

Successfully meeting the needs of a targeted audience will ultimately determine the success or failure of any on-line business website.