Below I list the seven dimensions identified by Nielsen Wire, and take a quick look at how a well-designed website helps you to reach your customers across each topic area.
- Information
This is perhaps the easiest way to reach shoppers and website visitors in general - everything you publish, from text content to images, carries information and helps to cement the details of your brand, service or product in the mind of the viewer. - Interaction
If you have a WordPress site or other blogging platform, interaction can be easy to achieve with comments on blog posts. Product reviews and testimonials allow customers to share their views on your service directly, while Twitter and Facebook are further ways to engage. - Entertainment
Business-focused sites might be less likely to need an entertainment angle, but for those of you with a social media presence, engaging on a fun level could help to add a new dimension to shopper interaction and reflect some positive light on to your brand. - Education
Here, the focus is on everything from providing information about a particular service or product, to related documents like instruction manuals, installation guides and more general 'how to' and list blog posts like this one. - Simplicity
This arguably ranges from the usability of your site in terms of loading times and ease of navigation, to describing your products in clear and simple terms - such as bullet point lists and tables of key features. - Self-worth
Shoppers want to be valued, and the best ways of doing that include allowing reviews to be posted by customers and welcoming feedback. You might even find out an area in which your service is underperforming, allowing you to improve and raise your saleability for the future. - Community
This again raises issues of engagement with potential customers, on social networks, in blog comments, by reprinting testimonials or simply by replying to email requests for support. Create a community and you can establish positive word of mouth even in a virtual sales environment.
