As a rule of thumb, a Responsive Design website costs more than your average website to build and run, but creating an effective business website is more than a numbers game. When weighing up the costs, you need to keep in mind that a responsive website works much harder for you than your standard desktop-centric website.

When clients initially come to 1800myweb.com, our team always makes a point of asking them if they are satisfied with their website’s performance. Many of them find this to be an intriguing question. They know their sites can be doing better, but they’re just not sure how.

If you’re an “online-only” business then the design and layout of your web site can make or break you. In this article I’m going to explain how and why you should step into your customer’s shoes and take a good long look at your web site to see what’s wrong with it and what you can improve to increase your sales.

The most important part of your website is the layout. If you were to ask your wife/sister/brother/friend to visit your web site and order one of your products do you think it would be an easy thing for them to do? Would your site navigation or difficult-to-read text confuse them?

Looking at your web site from the perspective of a potential customer can help you see and hopefully fix any potential pitfalls standing in the way of you turning your current visitors into profitable customers.

Here are a few things that you should look at from the perspective of your (potential) customers:

Web site navigation: Do you have a clean, simple and most importantly CONSISTENT method of navigating pages on your web site? If the menu on your home page is different to the menu on your other pages then you have a problem.