This excerpt is part of Entrepreneur.com's Second-Quarter Startup Kit which explores the fundamentals of starting up in a wide range of industries.
In Start Your Own Online Coupon or Daily Deal Business, the staff at Entrepreneur Press and writer Rich Mintzer explain how to start a business in the competitive online and daily deal industries. In this edited excerpt, the authors offer tips on creating a site that's easy to navigate and encourages shoppers to buy.
Whether you're using a web design program, online platform or hiring a web designer, you'll need to know what you want your website to look like before getting started. A first step? Looking at other daily deal, membership deal or coupon websites to give you some ideas of what you do and do not like.
Next, consider what you need from your design. Remember, you want to design your site to be:
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Easy to read
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Easy to navigate
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Visually appealing
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Easy to share deals
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Adaptable to mobile devices
For coupon sites, bright colors tend to give the site a light and friendly look. The coupons, which are most often provided from merchants, affiliates or elsewhere, need to be front and center so the product photo (which attracts the most attention), the name of the product and coupon details are clear. Nobody wants to have to look around to find out how much they're saving or when the deal's over. It's also better to include buttons rather than text links--they stand out.
The rest of the main page will depend on how you want your visitors to find more coupons. You can have links set up so visitors can sort by store names, manufacturers, types of product, top deals, holiday specials or any other categories you like. Remember to keep it simple so navigation remains easy. If you have free shipping coupons, put them in a category. Your site needs to feature what you have to offer and provide easy access and redemption.
Then there are advertisements. They, too, need to share prime space on your site, especially since someone's paying you to post them. Consider them in your layout. While you want a busy front or main page, you don't want it to be cluttered to the point where people give up and go elsewhere. Therefore, divide it into sections and conquer. People will appreciate knowing where they'll find things each time they come to your site--a consistent layout provides a sense of trust so that visitors feel comfortable that they will be able to find what they are looking for.
When visitors find coupons on your site, they'll want to print them unless all of your coupons are redeemable online. Coupon-printing software is provided by most coupon websites with a simple download that visitors only need to use once. The software is designed to help control the number of coupons that are printed. You'll need to provide a brief explanation of the printer software, which is typically downloadable for Macs or PCs. Keep it simple and easy to download.