Guidelines for a Marketing Website

Here are some basic guidelines to help you create a website that will generate sales and enquiries.  If you have a site already, you can use these rules as a quick check to see how to  improve.

1. Establish a clear, measurable objective.
2. Research the top key phrases likely to be used by potential customers.
3. Design the Home page to ensure that, in less than 10 seconds, visitors;
   1. Understand the benefits they might receive from the website owner
   2. Believe in the ability of the site to provide an effective service
   3. See where they can easily find more relevant information
4. Create a simple navigation structure allowing a separate page for optimising each of the key phrases using:
   1. Page title
   2. Meta description
   3. Meta keywords
   4. H1 tag for on-page title
5. Show clearly what you want the visitor to do next.
6. Find incentives to encourage visitors to trial purchase or leave contact details
7. Conform to best standard practice by providing:
   1. Sitemap as specified at sitemap.org
   2. Privacy Policy
   3. Offline contact info: company name, address, phone
   4. About Us page to confirm the credibility of the website owner
   5. Web stats reports

Talk to you next month!

Stephen Orr