The Importance of Good Website Design: Key Factors

The design of a website is fundamental to its ability to strive profitably in the midst of a competitive marketing environment. While craving for uniqueness, many online organisations have come up with different designs for their websites. Inasmuch as these efforts are commendable, it is obvious that some of these websites repel customers rather than keep them. This is because the elements of a website design determine how it is perceived by customers.

Past studies propose that various website features incorporated into the design of a website contributes to the development of a positive web perception. These features include: navigation, ease of use, quality information, site content, product comparison, interactivity, personalization, experiential nature, ease of ordering, customer satisfaction, media variety, security and external subjective opinions (Lepkowska-White and Eifler 2008). However, the following can be considered as the top three: appearance, content and navigation.

Appearance: A company’s website is often the earliest point of contact for potential customers with company in the growing trend of online activities (Sourcewrite Limited 2009). It must reflect the market positioning of the business and must be consistent through all the pages. For example the same colour, typeface, line colour, logo, etc. The graphics and photos should tell the visitor about the company and its products (Cox and Koelzer 2004). According to McElroy (2006) a company’s website must appear professional and reliable in order to generate consumer confidence. So, the homepage of a website should look interesting and inviting. Having an appealing appearance for a website means it should have good use of colour that will catch a customer’s eye and create a proper mood and tone for the business and also attract visitors to the site often. This can be achieved by making a good use of two colours and their blend, white or open space to separate graphic and text elements, a clearly visible headline, subheads and hyperlinks that offer additional features and smaller graphics for fast downloading (Cox and Koelzer 2004).

Content: Alan and Lambert (2001) say that a website is all about content. If the content of a website is captivating, it will generate traffic to the website. Providing a content that get users to repeat visits to the website helps to build customer loyalty and long term relational exchange between the customer and the business. The information provided must be comprehensible, useful and relevant to the need of the customer. This can be achieved through the use of simple, clear and concise language. Research has shown that quality information in a website encourage customer patronage and gives a positive impression about the website. It engenders trust in the business-customer relationship (Vorvoreanu 2008).

However, care must be taken that the need to provide sufficient information does not lead to an ‘informational overload’ which can discourage prospective customers. The goal is to give enough information that will get customers to patronise the website (Lepkowska-White and Eifler 2008).

Navigation: Navigation is defined by Page and Lepkowska-White (2002:236) as the “scope to which consumers are able to locate desired information at will”. Website navigation determines the amount of content that a user will be exposed to in a given period of time.

A website should be designed in such a way that users are free to move about it in a manner that they cannot miss out on the information provided. A site must, as a consequence, be easy to navigate. According to Davis (2000), a good website must choose “architecture over aesthetics.” In order words, the structure of a website should be practicable, clear, and fluid from the homepage linking to other pages within the site and back to the home page (Huizingh, 2000). A good example of this is Amazon which has a clear homepage and a drop list of navigation tabs that takes you from that homepage to its other pages.

If users do not understand the interface of a website, they are likely to form negative perceptions about the site and therefore not patronize it. If they get lost on the website, they may leave and never come back (Ash and Lambert 2001; Nielsen 2004).

Gordijk (2010) posits that consumers ask three basic questions when they first get on a website:
• What is this website about?
• What can I see or do here?
• How do I go about doing it?

If a website fails to answer these three questions adequately from its homepage down to its other features and pages, then the website has fallen short of its intended purpose.

The Way Forward...
Fortunately, free tools on website design abound on the internet, so there is no justification for a crappy website! For example, good fonts can be gotten from a website like beautifulfonts. One can get free colours at colortools.net. There are free clip arts at free-clipart-pictures.net and free templates at freewebsitetemplates.com. There are free graphics at freegraphics.com and free search engines at freefind.com. And also a website as Bravenet offers these tools on a single platform.

If these tools are utilised properly, the appearance, content and navigation of a website can appeal visually to a visitor and give it a competitive advantage over others. But, websites should not be overloaded with graphics, photographs, complex design or irrelevant sound or content. It will only keep customers away.


References:

Ash, B. and Tom, L. (2001) E-marketing Dominance: How to use the Internet to win and keep Customers. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company

Cox, B. G. and Koelzer, W. (2004) Internet Marketing. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc

Davis, J. (2000) A Guide to Web Marketing: Successful Promotion on the Net. London: Kogan Page Ltd

Gordijk, N. (2010) ‘The Importance of Navigation in Website Design’ Inforserve Media [online] available from
http://www.infoservemedia.com/support/articles/web_design_navigation.html [28 March 2010]

Huizingh, E. K. R. E. (2000) ‘The Content and Design of Web Sites: An Empirical Study.’ Information and Management 37(3), 123–134

Lepkowska- White, E. and Eifler, A. (2008) ‘Spinning the Web: The Interplay of Web Design Features and Product Types’. Journal of Website Promotion 3(3/4), 196-212

McElroy, C. (2006) ‘How Important is Website Design?’ Selfseo [online] available from http://www.selfseo.com/story-18143.php [28 March 2010]

Nielsen, J. (2003) ‘Usability 101: Introduction to Usability’ Useit [online] available from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html [28 March 2010]

Page, C. and Lepkowska-White, E. (2002) ‘Web equity: A framework for building consumer value in online companies.’ Journal of Consumer Marketing 19 (3), 231–246

Sourcewrite (2009) Website design and Development [online] available from http://www.sourcewrite.co.uk/webdesign.aspx [28 March 2010]

Vorvoreanu, M. (2008) ‘Website Experience Analysis: A New Research protocol for Studying Relationship Building on corporate Websites’. Journal of Website Promotion 3(3/4), 222-249

Trust vs Trustworthiness: Which is More Relevant to Online Business?

Trust and trustworthiness are two terms whose role in the growth and success of relationships cannot be ignored. It becomes even more critical when one makes reference to the relationship that exists between an online business and its customers. Particularly, at a time when relationship marketing has been thought to establish, develop, and maintain successful and mutually beneficial long term relational exchanges with customers, they cannot be overemphasised.(Morgan and Hunt 1994) In this article, the concept of trust and trustworthiness are highlighted and explained in detail. However, one of the two is considered more crucial to online businesses.

Trust, according to Mayer et al (1995), ‘is the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party’. In this definition, the term, ‘trustor’ refers to the party who is exposed to the actions of another party (trustee). The trustor (customer) recognises and analyses the risks involved when exposed to the actions (products and services) of the trustee(online business) but chooses to be vulnerable all the same whether there is a control system that ensures that his expectations are met or not. People’s ability to trust varies due to the differences in their personality and experiences when a risk is perceived.

Risk is the ‘culprit’ here because without it, the need to build trust in customer - online business relationship would not be necessary. Khan et al (2009), identifies types of risk to include functional risk, physical risk, financial risk, social risk, and time risk. Functional risk involves the uncertainty in a product’s ability to satisfy the need or want for which it is bought. Physical risk is about the safety of the customer using a product. Here, the customer is also at risk of being hurt if the personal information given out goes into the wrong hands. Financial risk has to do with high involvement products where a customer would have to pay a high price for a product. This includes the fact that customers are paying online and can be duped or have their credit card information accessed by fraudsters. Social risk is the risk of being ridiculed or coming to some disrepute by using a particular product or brand. While time risk looks at when a customer is at risk of being forced to keep a product bought because of wrong choice.


Due to these risks perceived and involved in online transaction, online businesses must be able exhibit attributes that make them worthy of their customers trust. This will not only ensure repeat purchases but will also make them loyal to the brand. Kharouf and Sekhon (2008) assert that this loyalty can be attitudinal or behavioural. Attitudinal loyalty can be described as a type of loyalty where a customer develops a strong emotional attachment to a brand and buys the brand no matter what the competition has to offer. While behavioural loyalty is about repeated purchases that does not depict any form of attachment. Rather, it may mean that it is more convenient to buy the brand or because an incentive has been offered.

Trustworthiness has been defined by Ben-Ner et al (2009), to mean ‘the willingness of a person B (on-line business) to act favorably towards a person A (consumer), when A has placed an implicit or explicit demand or expectation for action on B’. Consumers have expectations they want met. Where this is absent, trust is undermined. Hardin (2002:1) says that ‘to ask any question about trust is implicitly to ask about the reasons for thinking the relevant party to be trustworthy'. Mayer et al (1995) argues that the attributes that a trustee exhibits will determine how great or small the level of trust will be. They are of the view that the factors that lead to trust can be summarised in three attributes: ability, benevolence, and integrity, which they referred to as the ‘factors of trustworthiness’. These three characteristics determine how much an online shop is perceived as being trustworthy.

Ability: This refers to the competence of the online business to deliver its promises. The consistency and the competence with which they satisfy and exceed their customers’ expectations in the kind of service and product they deliver will cause their customers to perceive them as being trustworthy. This will in turn engender trust in the mind of their customers.

Benevolence: Online communities must never be seen as being exploitative and only interested in making profits. But should be seen as aware and sensitive to their customers needs, and interested in their welfare. They must be perceived as caring and customer-oriented.

Integrity: This has to do with the online businesses being consistent in following a set of principles and values that are in alignment with those of their customers. They should be seen as reliable, open in communication and honest such that customers do not see them as deceptive. A survey of 1,600 customers on their changing attitudes to financial services reveals that more than 71% do not trust the industry, while one out of every ten totally distrust marketing information given by banks.(Fund Strategy,2009). This stresses the need to build a relationship based on organisational trustworthiness.

In addition, because customers may have questions about products and services online, exhaustive information must be provided to address these concerns.

In conclusion, it is important to note that the risks involved in online transactions make it necessary that online businesses should have trustworthiness attributed to them, if they are perceived to be worthy of trust. This will go a long way to encourage the intention to buy and actual financial risk taking (purchase) by consumers, as well as attitudinal loyalty in the long run.

References

Ben-Ner, A. and Frey, H. (2010) ‘Trusting and Trustworthiness: What are they, How to Measure them, and What Affects them’. Journal of Economic Psychology 31 (1), 64-79

Fund Strategy (2009) ‘SCAM- Second Coming Asset Management’. Fund Strategy 19 October, 39

Hardin, R. (2004) Trust and Trustworthiness. New York: Russell Sage Foundation

Khan, B. M., Shahid, S. A., and Akhtar, A. (2009) ‘Role of Trust: Brand Equity’. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 12-22

Kharouf, H., Sekhon, H. (2008), Trustworthiness within the Hotel Sector: A structural Model, IIMA conference proceedings: India

Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., and Schoorman, F. D. (1995) ‘An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust’. The Academy Review 20 (3), 709-734

Morgan, R. M., and Hunt, S. D. (1994) ‘The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing.’ Journal of Marketing 58, 20-38

The Internet and Who We Have Become: A Look at Homointerneticus

On Thursday the 18th of February, 2010, BBC posted a documentary on their website tagged “The Virtual Revolution 4: Homointerneticus”. Homointerneticus is a term coined to describe a current shift in human behaviour of learning and growing from natural experience, to a state of learning that is very much dependent on the Internet. Dr. Aleks Krotoski, the presenter takes the viewer into an exploratory journey on the internet’s true role and purpose in human society.

Over the past few years, there has been a growing fear that the internet is fast taking over the minds of people. People are spending hours doing more on the web than they would any other activity in their daily lives. They surf the net constantly, watching movies, reading gossip, chatting with friends, doing shopping, sending e-mails, you name it; their dependency on it growing more with time.

According to Dr. Aleks Krotoski, the web’s revolutionary effects on humans can be found in South Korea, considered to be the world’s most wired nation on earth. Children over there as young as three years of age can be found using the internet. Reports of internet addiction are prevalent amongst South Korea’s youth. Dr. Krotoski reveals that according to research, 62% of the population’s 3-5 years olds are on the internet roughly 8 hours every week, twice the exposure by British five year olds. The South Korean government figures on the other hand show that close to 210,000 children are affected by the internet’s pull, many of which spend 18 hours online each day. 80% of those afflicted in this group need medication to treat their addiction while 20% need to be hospitalized.

Internet addicts can be described as people who spend an unhealthy time on the internet, either for productive or unproductive purposes. In the documentary, Dr. Krotoski highlights the effects of the internet on South Korea’s young, but these kids are not the only ones affected in general. According to The Center for Internet Addiction (2010), surveys reveal that some employees have lost their jobs because they spend too much time on the internet for non-job related issues. 1 in 5 of these employees view online pornography at work and 70% of adult web sites are hit between the hours of 9-5. Not only do employees surf sex sites but they also visit sport sites, bid on eBay, trade stocks, shop online, and send jokes to co-workers. This type of misuse not only hurts employee job performance but increases threats to information security and drains valuable network resources.

From the net’s addictive nature, Krotoski explores the manner in which the internet affects the way people think in the long run. According to a Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield of Oxford University, the internet may be distorting children’s sense of reality, discouraging them from learning between action and consequence. Kids may stay in a “fantasized” state where there are no rights or wrongs, just actions. On the internet, one can do anything, say anything and get away with it, but that is not true in real life situations. However, because of the illusion provided by the internet, most young people think they can do the same in real life situations and go scot-free. This in the long run will contribute to the rise in the number of delinquents.

In the same vain, Dr. Krotoski examines the internet’s negative ability to make people become lazy thinkers. The web's design which is based on the foundation of “associative thinking”, in this case use of hyperlinks, encourage internet users to move through web pages barely skimping through or internalizing the information they are exposed to. Nowadays people hardly read books because this “hyperlinked-network” provides an easy way to access information even when this information is not provided to the fullest as would in a book. This is overall damaging to the development of the human brain which is designed for more rigorous activity.

In conclusion, the internet can be referred to as man’s leading invention in the 21st century. It is a powerful tool in advancing human knowledge and capacity. However, if used wrongly, it could be the very thing that damages the very essence that created it in the first place, the human mind.

References:

The Center for Internet Addiction Recovery
http://www.netaddiction.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=91&Itemid=105 [ 28 February 2010]

BBC (2010) “The Virtual Revolution 4: Homointerneticus” [online]’available from’ http://bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution [28 February 2010]

WHY SMEs SHOULD CONSIDER E-MARKETING

Recreation Shirts came into the Nigerian Market two years ago. They create ready to wear and perfect fit shirts for young women who desire to look chic and trendy amongst their peers.

In the first year of their emergence, Recreation Shirts acquired most of their clientele through word of mouth communication and recommendations given by satisfied clients. As the months progressed, the company got more word out about their services by engaging in print advertising in soft-sell publications as City people, and a stint of television advertising on Dynamix TV, both Nigerian based media.

In their second year, Recreation Shirts looked to gain a much broader and international customer base, but at a reduced cost in advertising. The company created a facebook page and a website to interact with potential and existing consumers about their notable services.

The CEO of Recreation shirts, Mrs. Tale Kevin-Agono explains that the company’s facebook account has generated greater exposure and publicity for their establishment more than the print and TV adverts had done the previous year. This has improved the company’s overall sales.

In her own words she says, “At this stage of our marketing efforts we feel closer to our consumers and believe we can give them better services through our frequent interactions.”

The case study above illustrates the challenges facing small and medium sized enterprises and how e-marketing can address these issues. Considering their size and their limited resources, online marketing couldn’t have emerged at a better time.

Compared to traditional marketing, the benefits e-marketing offers are ideal to the growth of SMEs in modern society. To start with, the increase in the use of the internet offers SMEs a very good opportunity to reach their actual and potential buyers all over the world with their products and services. In offline marketing, the location of a business determines the success or failure of that business. Online marketing on the other hand offers a new avenue to reach billions of people with their product at the same time without the inhibitions of distance and place.

In terms of equal opportunity to reach their target market at low cost, e-marketing places these small businesses and their competitors on the same pedestal. Big companies spend millions on advertising, but with little or no cost at all, small and medium sized enterprises can place their adverts on the same ‘shelf’ and position their brand better in the mind of consumers.

E- marketing gives SMEs the power to reach consumers globally in a wide range of ways and enables them to offer a wide range of products and services. Some of these services embedded in e-marketing are information management, public relations, customer services and sales. All these can be referred to as the scope of e-marketing, and with the range of new technology available this scope can only grow. Quirk E-marketing (2006:3)

Equally, the dynamic nature of e-marketing helps SMEs create and build their relationship with their customers through social networks like facebook, twitter, and the likes. The communication flow here is not one-sided, i.e. from the marketer to the consumers, but customers are given the opportunity to make comments and recommend possible product modifications to meet their needs. This is where Marketing research comes to play in E-marketing.

Marketing research plays a major role in the success of business organisations involved in online marketing. Organisations embark in marketing research when they want to formulate, know the level of consumer satisfaction or modify existing products or service and its packaging or delivery. This helps the company to develop a feasible marketing plan or measure the success of its previous plans.

In conclusion, SMEs rely on e-marketing to push them beyond their capable limits and put them on the same platform as their competitors, with guaranteed returns on investment.

References

Facebook, Recreation Shirts [online] available from http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid= 148372993168 [23 February 2010]

Recreation Shirts, [online] available from http://www.recreationshirts.com/index2.html [22 February 2010]

Quirk E-Marketing (2006), available from http://www.quirk.biz/resources/88/What-is-eMarketing-and-how-is-it-better-than-traditional-marketing [22 February 2010]

Mobile Phones: The New Age

Years of inventing never prepared man for the technology of the telephone. A hundred and forty years later, this invention by Alexander Graham Bell has taken up a new look with far greater purposes. Yes, that telephone gave birth to a ‘mobile’ phone, and as the word implies, a phone that can be moved and carried about with ease.

In the 21st century, the mobile phone holds its own place in everyday life. People can hardly imagine a life without their ‘mobiles’. They make calls with it, send messages with it, you name it. The mobile phone has grown into the minds and hearts of people and has even become closer to them than any body part. From the young to the old, the mobile phone seems to have something for everyone.

Although the primary function of this gadget is for verbal communication between two or more people separated by distance or space, the mobile phone is undoubtedly an improvement from the traditional telephone which is considered bulky and cannot be moved over great distances without its wired connection. But that’s not where the magic of the mobile phone lies. With great effort, investment and innovation over the years by its manufacturers, the mobile phone has adopted a number of features similar to the regular PC. Some of these features include operating system, e-mail access, internet access, in-built camera, contact management, scheduling software, accelerometers, some navigation software along with the occasional ability to read business documents in various formats like Microsoft Office and PDF format, (Laptop XL 2009). In addition to these features, it now has internet facilities such that it’s being referred to in some quarters as the ‘new computer’, with the advent of Smart phones and PDA phones.

With all of these features, why would one bother to carry laptops about, when these phones offer the same services computers do? Really, in quite a number of ways mobile phones have an edge over the PC. To start with, consider the mobile phone’s compact properties; it’s small, fits into the hand and can be carried in a bag or pocket. Basically it’s easy to access while commuting i.e. one can check e-mails, send emails, send files, you name it and on the go without being worried about the ‘extra luggage’ a laptop would cause.
On the area of privacy, a growing number of individuals have seen the benefits of a mobile phone in personalizing their daily activities. Users can do basic things like check dates, time, and organize their schedules efficiently as well as remember appointments when they set reminders on their phones. Also, they can access private e-mails without fear of spam and trackers, or even people accessing their mail if they fail to log out on a public, or even their private computers. Mobile phone thus serves as an empowerment for these individuals because they take ownership of their personal data.

The edge mobile phones have over the basic laptop or desktop is Flexibility. The mobile phone can represent or stand for style, portability, privacy, security, easy internet connectivity and most importantly pass direct information from people in any given location. Though the conventional computer or desktop might be able to carry out the same functions, it will not do it with the same ease and comfort that the mobile phone possesses. The mobile phone is definitely the ‘new computer’ for the new age.

References
Laptop XL, Smartphones [online] available from [18 February 2010]

Coventry Students....Our Experience

About E-execs

Hello everyone,

Welcome to E-execs blogspot!

E-execs is an E-marketing forum set up by four Masters students of Advertising and Marketing at Coventry University in the UK. This blog will be discussing and examining issues in online marketing and its future prospects in our diverse and ever changing world.

Every week, we shall be exploring e-marketing concepts and strategies as it relates to various businesses, online communities, consumer profiles and emerging trends.

But before we go any further, it’s only fair to introduce ourselves, the E-execs:

Yemisi Ladipo-Ajayi
Emily Agu
Njideka Nwaka
Kayode Ojo

We are excited to be doing this blog together and we hope to have a thrilling experience learning from you and you from us.

With that said, come on guys let’s explore E-marketing together!!!!