When you walk into an ice cream store you expect to see ice cream, a shoe store--shoes, an electronics store--televisions. The point is one that merchants have known forever. You can't sell what people don't see on the shelves. Website designers, however, are not merchants rather they are artists with a flair for the technical. They often design for the sake of design without taking into consideration the purpose of the website itself--to foster awareness of services offered or of product being sold.

On this point, the most unforgivable mistake that web designers make is to hide what is being sold from site visitors. The simple truth is that your visitors expect to see what it is that you are offering on your home page, the introduction to your website. They want to know without having to dig through pages of useless information to see what they are getting themselves into. As a designer, I believe it is my duty to make it easy for your customer or client to quickly understand what you are selling before they have time to migrate away from your page to your competitor.

Statistics show that most (over 90%) visits to websites last for less than 2 seconds, about the same time one looks at a print advertisement. Not long at all. If the visitor doesn't see something of interest in those brief seconds, they are lost to you perhaps forever. They aren't going to spend time scrolling through page after page to find out what you do. They aren't going to wade through benefits if they aren't quickly convinced that you offer what they need. They aren't going to bother. They will simply click away just as fast as they clicked on your site. If your client has to guess what you are selling they are gone. It would be like walking into an ice cream store with a hot fudge sundae in mind and seeing a list of benefits of eating ice cream before you are granted access to the inner sanctum where the ice cream is actually being sold. I wouldn't stay and I'm sure you wouldn't either.

A designer's job is to make it clear immediately what the purpose of your site is, what is being sold or offered. This information must be in the first third of your web page or you risk sending your potential customer to your competitor. So how do you make it clear what you offer?

The answer is simple. It really is! TELL YOUR VISITORS in explicit terms what you do. Don't mix words, back away from a simple, straightforward statement of what you do and that's it. No why, no how, just what. Think about how you tell someone that inquires as to what you do. You tell him, "I'm in the widget business. I sell widgets to the people who need them most." You don't get into a long explanation about the benefits of your widgets over your competitors widgets. You don't go into the history of widgets in America. You don't offer to sell widgets to your friend. That all comes later. Now its all about straightforward information--period!

In the same way you tell someone what business you are in, you must TELL visitors to your website what you can do for them and do it quickly, without frills. Your visitors want quick information. They are not going to scroll down to get that information. They'll just go elsewhere. As a designer, my job is to be sure they stay put. Make your site so informative at the beginning that your visitors choose to linger rather than migrate away.

Roger is a principal at RNS Design Group, an internet design firm specializing in small businesses and organizations. Through RNS Domains he offers Linux or Windows website hosting services, domain name registration and more.