Many assume when building a site that people will know how to navigate but the truth is, even today, you still have to keep it as simple as possible. Most of you probably know this already but this is a reminder to those who are about to or just building a website. It serves as a simple reminder that even in 2010, the internet is relatively young and people are still getting accustomed to the web. There are still people (and I’d say most) who have no idea about social media, etc and come across websites with a bunch of share buttons and are like, WHAT THE HELL?

So, with the title of this post, you have to think how would the dumbest person act on my site? (Sorry for the word dumb, I don’t literally mean stupid…maybe just not web savy which doesn’t make a person dumb…web dumb, maybe? New word…)

This, by no means you shouldn’t build a website that has all key elements that most have today such as widgets, etc. It is just important to remember that your website must also be easy to use to make the conversion process as simple as possible for the user and not distract them fro the main goal your website has whether it is to make a sale or generate a lead.

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In a recent post by eMarketer, a great survey was done amongst some e-retailers which gives us a good picture of what is being prioritized and looked at in the past AND next few months for online retailers.

“Even in summer 2009, Internet Retailer and Vovici found e-commerce sites preparing to invest ahead of recovery to provide a better shopping experience. The increasingly consumer-centric focus of online shopping sites is now leading two-thirds of them to plan a site redesign for 2010, according to the researchers’ “Website Design Strategies and Tactics” survey.

Among those sites that will refresh their looks, better organization and updating of home, category and product pages are top priorities, followed by better search engine optimization.”

I have to say, as an e-commerce guy myself, the web design priorities on the first chart are pretty much on point with priorities we ourselves have been putting into place and giving more emphasis.

It’s VERY important to have your website homepage UPDATED. I see this as an issue in small online retailers but this is one factor that says a lot about your store. If you walked by a retail storefront and saw the same items on display and nothing changes after a few weeks or months, you would think that business JUST DOESNT CARE so why would I care? The aspect of a refreshed and updated homepage can go a long-way with a user that has come back to browse your website after a second time. This also goes for non-ecommerce sites for that matter.

The second priority on the list being Search Engine Optimization. Well…that is a focus many try to place but just aren’t sure how if they dont have an in-house team working on it or outsourced help. You must have optimized design in order to achieve the best rankings and that all starts with the very basics of SEO that sometimes companies get caught up in trying new strategies and forget to stick to the basics. Solid meta tags, image optimization with tags, navigation, INNER LINKING, etc.

In the coming weeks, I’ll discuss e-commerce web design further.

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Here is the list of 7 great tools:

1) Yahoo! YSlow

2) Web Page Analyzer

3) Google Page Speed

4) Google Webmaster Tools Site Performance

5) SmartSprites

6) Pingdom Tools Full Page Test

7) WebPagetest

Read the whole story @ WebDesignBooth.com -------> 7 Tools To Optimize The Speed of Your Website
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