What Makes a Great Website?

If you’re building your own site to save money, either with web-publishing software or with an online site builder, make it attractive. But don’t forget critical elements (often invisible) that are necessary to bring in traffic. Finally, what you have must be functional to make it easy for visitors so they don’t leave without reading what you had to offer!

10 Steps Toward a Successful Website

1. Establish a concise list of objectives. What is your main goal?
2. Understand the target audience.
   What information do they need, and how fast? Will graphics or video help?
3. Provide quality content and keep it concise.
   It must immediately convey it’s purpose, or visitors will leave.
4. Develop a site map based on a logical sequence to display information.
5. Keep the visitor in mind when developing a navigation scheme.
   The flow from page to page should be logical and consistent.
6. Utilize multimedia features if they aid communication.
   Mouse rollovers, animated images, sound, etc. can reinforce the text.
7. Make it Search Engine friendly (Google friendly!). Appropriate title, SEO keywords and META tags are essential to generating traffic.
8. Maintain the site on a regular basis to keep it fresh and give visitors a reason to return.
9. Integrate the site with other components of your marketing plan.
10. Work with a professional developer who has an understanding of both technological and marketing aspects.           More Web Design and SEO tips!

Keep Your Site Working Hard

Your business has a website because it’s a cost-effective way to supplement advertising to prospects and to maintain contact with customers. Include the web address in all marketing material, correspondence, signage, and phone directory ads. You want your site to be more attractive and more user-friendly than the websites of your competition. You’re happy with the design, structure and your marketing video. But once the site is online, it can be all too easy to neglect a key ingredient—your content!

The site may have contained informative and relevant information when it was built, but is it still current and correct? It can cost very little time or money to ensure that your website continues to do it’s best to help your business thrive. If you don’t put that small effort in, visitors can be quickly “turned off” by faulty or outdated information. Here are steps to keep the site working hard for you:

1. Maintain the site on a regular basis to keep it fresh and give visitors a reason to return.
   Outdated information gives the impression that you’re unreliable. Your Webmaster or designer can make it easy for you to make your own timely changes to parts of the site. In minutes, you can change a “weekly specials” page, add new products, update pricing information or edit a “customer news” page.
2. Provide quality content, including keywords that visitors are looking for. Keywords and content are the most important factors for your pages to rank high in search engines (at no expense to you). Make it easier for people to find you by incorporating the SEO words and phrases they’re searching for.
3. Keep it customer focused. Give your visitors what they seek or they will find someone else who will. Know the target audience for your products or services. Add a page to concisely address how you can fill the visitor’s needs or they will leave.
4. Integrate the site with your marketing plan. For a particular campaign, you may want to direct visitors to a specific “landing page”, instead of the home page.

It’s always a good idea to visit the websites of your competitors to get more ideas on improving your website. But the most important thing is to view your site from the eyes of visitors. Give them what they want!

Attract more business for your company, more members for your organization, or more friends for your personal life!

Google Page Rank Tool

Input your website address to find how Google ranks your site. The scale is from 0 to 10 with 10 being best. Most sites range from 2-5, with only very large sites receiving higher ranks.
Ask me how to increase your number!