Kelly Watson is owner of One Woman Marketing, a self-help marketing resource that helps women successfully and affordably market their businesses and themselves. She offers great marketing tips to female entrepreneurs on her blog and recently featured WMT in her Real Women in Business Series.

As a marketing consultant, Kelly helps women in business leverage their strengths and identify where their marketing fails female buyers while creating marketing that improves sales to both genders.

Enjoy Kelly’s guest post below and be sure to check out her popular marketing blog and download her free PDF report, “Brain Sex: Five Things You MUST Know About Gender & Marketing.”

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First impressions count more than you think. I learned this when a graphic designer hired me to write his website copy. I knew that if I wanted the copy to make sales, I needed proof that good web design makes a difference.

But boy, did my research surprise me! One study from a Canadian team of researchers showed that:

Internet users make up their minds about a website’s quality in literally a blink of an eye.

(That’s 50 milliseconds, for all you non-scientists out there.)

And that’s not all. This first impression of web design carries over to the rest of the web site’s content. Psychologists call this the halo effect. If their first impression is positive, visitors view the rest of the web content in a more positive light.

If the first impression of web design is negative, the opposite occurs: viewers extend those negative feelings to the website copy, the products for sale, and ultimately the business itself.

In short: you can have the best web content money can buy. But if your web design stinks, it doesn’t matter. People will hit the back button long before they ever see it.

Naturally, the study’s authors don’t specify what improves a web site’s likeability. That would be too easy! But you can start by making sure your web design is clean and uncluttered, with a strong navigation structure that makes finding information easy.

Here are some more tips for great web design:

Keep it simple, sweetie. Bells, whistles and blinking text were cool 10 years ago. Not anymore. Today’s internet users care more about functionality than flair. Make them happy by keeping your web design simple and easy to scan. Use clear navigation and break up chunks of copy with subheads and bullet points.

Learn to love empty space. To really understand the value of empty space, just pick up a magazine. The most attractive page designs will be the ones with the most visual breathing room. This helps viewers process the content that’s actually there. Provide the same breathing room in your web design, and viewers will thank you.

Test, test, test. Google Analytics tracks your visitors and their browsing paths for free. You can use it to see what elements of your web design are capturing the most attention, and which ones aren’t doing their job.  Then, you can make improvements.

Don’t make me think. This is actually the title of a popular book on web design by Steve Krug, but it’s also a good rule to keep in mind when designing your site. “Clever” has a place on the internet, but not in effective web site design. Users simply want to know how to get from point A to point B. Make it easy for them.

Get inspired. It’s hard coming up with good web design from scratch. Luckily, the internet is packed with great designs. Just Google ‘best web design,’ and feast your eyes on the results. You may be inspired to take a new direction.

Kelly Watson is a marketing consultant and the owner of One Woman Marketing, where she blogs regularly on marketing for women business owners.

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