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Get a Visual Strategy
June, 2000

Most sites need only as much graphical design as necessary to meet your marketing objectives, such as making a professional impression, qualifying prospects, or making the sale. Some of the Internet's most popular websites are under-designed; check out Yahoo, Amazon.com and eBay.

Take these steps to develop an effective visual strategy for your website:

1. Research. Get to know your audience. Visits websites that already serve your targeted visitors, including competitive and industry sites. Take note of colors, visual styles and content. Contact your industry associations for quantitative research on demographics such as gender, age, and education. What kind of computer equipment do they use? How do they connect to the Internet? All of this figures into determining an appropriate visual strategy.
    

2. Select a Style. Based on your research, pick a visual style that helps to meet your objectives, and stick with it. A photographic style conveys the human element of your product or service, and serves to make your company more credible. (See www.hillandthomas.com.) An illustrated style can introduce humor and is better to engage a consumer. (See www.flamingosurprise.com.) A themed style can help site visitors immediately understand a site's offering and differentiate the site from competitors. (See www.harringtonelectric.com.)
    

3. Implement. Much is said about a site's download time. Sure, faster is better, but some sites are worth the wait. This is where your research comes into play. If your targeted audience is likely to have current hardware and a fast corporate Internet connection, or if your site serves a captive audience, you can raise your limit of acceptable download times. See www.alpacafarm.com and www.mafsi.org for examples of sites that convey more visual information to prospective visitors the research shows are more likely to have a fast Internet connection.

Here are other examples where we've designed a visual strategy in light of audience criteria:

Male Audience: See www.macsworld.com for a site we redesigned to appeal to manufacturers' representatives, mostly men. Reps, who frequently travel by car, will immediately identify with the site's dashboard toolbar and darker, bold color scheme.

Female Audience: The pastel hues of www.googone.com help to promote household cleaning products to a primarily female audience. The floral motif of theliberty.heatherhill.org help to make this assisted living option particularly appealing.

Consumer Audience: The site at www.jellystoneohio.com serves prospective camping customers with a colorful, cartoonish look that downloads quickly.

Contact Dynamics Online about developing a visual strategy as part of your overall Internet marketing plan.