10 Tips for Planning an Outstanding Website by Ivana Katz

Back

10 Tips for Planning an Outstanding Website
by Ivana Katz

When faced with the daunting task of planning what to include on your website and how to write the copy, here are a few tips that will make the task easier for you.

1. Visitor Friendly

The main thing to keep in mind is that your website needs to be visitor friendly. What this means is that your customer must be able to find what they are looking for easily and quickly. And that means great navigational system. Most websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it's best to stick with it. It also helps to include your navigation bar at the bottom of each page to save your visitors from having to scroll back to the top.

2. Search Engine Friendly

Search engines try to list sites that contain good content, so you need keywords and phrases on your pages that best describe your service and products. For example, if you are a florist, use the words such as florist, online florist, virtual florist, wedding florist, florist in Sydney, florist on line, flowers, floral, bouquets, floral arrangements etc as many times as possible to ensure high search engine ranking. To find out what keywords your customers may be searching check out:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
http://www.wordtracker.com

Once you decide on the keywords, use them in
(a) Your website's domain name
(b) The title of your page - This is displayed in the top bar of your browser window
(c) The heading of your home page
(d) The first paragraph of your home page
(e) Meta tags - Keywords, page title, description
(f) Titles of your graphics

Whilst it is important to use keywords as much as possible, it is also important you use them only if they are relevant and do not sound awkward. If you spam your keywords you may be penalised or even banned by some search engines.

3. Informational vs On-line Store

One of the first decisions you need to make is what type of website to have. Will it be informational only or will it be an on-line store or a combination of both? An informational website is like having an on-line brochure. It does not sell products directly to customers, but rather provides details of your business, its products and services and occasionally features a printable order form.

The other type of website is an on-line store. It is a virtual salesperson who potentially never stops providing presales information to your prospects - and then making sales to them.

4. Create a Plan

Before you start thinking about what to write on each page of your website, it is important that you create a plan, which lists all the pages you wish to include. Below is a list of the most commonly used pages:

(a) Home Page (First Page)
(b) Products / Services
(c) Contact Us
(d) Pricing
(e) Testimonials / Product Reviews / Before & After
(f) Frequently Asked Questions
(g) Response form such as

Author's Biography:

Posted on: March 1,2008

Email: ivana@web4business.com.au
Website: http://www.websites4smallbusiness.com.au