Establish a concise list of objectives for your website.
What do you want to accomplish? Sell a product?  Sell a service? Gather contact info for emailing or calling?  Sign up a new member?  Motivate to visit a physical location? Motivate to call?  Invite to take a survey?  Invite to submit feedback?  When you’ve decided what actions to prompt visitors to take, you can design your site for all pages to work towards that goal or goals.

 
If you want to drive people to visit your brick and mortar location, be sure that maps and driving directions are prominent.  Include photos of the location.  Include testimonials of how easy it was for customers to find it and what great service they received there.  Make your business hours clear.
 
What is your niche market?
If you have several goals, you may need to decide between having one or more sites.  With multiple products or services that are closely related, one site may be sufficient, but if they differ slightly or you’ll be marketing them differently, unique sites may be best so that each can achieve it’s particular purpose.  One larger site can be easier to administer and the combined volume of content could be better for SEO.

Keep your navigation logical and your order process simple.  Offer “help” pages or windows when any doubt could arise about what visitors should do next or what information to enter in forms.  This is where “pop-up windows” can be helpful.  If someone is interested enough to take out their credit card or submit information, don’t lose them by complicating the process.  Make it clear what buttons to press and which links to choose for their individual needs.

Identify your target audience
Who exactly are you trying to reach?  Are they located in a particular geographic area?  How old are they and might they have any technical or physical challenges?  What information do they need, and how fast? Will graphics help?  What is their typical financial situation?  Are they male, female or both?  What is their age group and education level?  What keywords would they use to describe your product/service?  Answering these questions will help improve your conversion rate without wasted effort and cost.  The better you understand your customers, the easier to meet their needs.  What is your niche?
The above factors could help you determine any of these:
 – Language(s) for site to use and/or how formal text should be
 – Text size and colors
 – Amount of text per page and reading level of terminology used
 – Objective of site (online sale or visit location or contact via phone or email)
 – Types of images to best reinforce text
 – Most appealing images of people (similar age/race/occupational make-up)