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You want a great web site don’t you? Not an ordinary website or an OK website, a great website! So how do you go about getting one? Well, there are 7 important things that you need to consider and implement in order to have a website that does its job as the most important marketing tool that you have.

7) The Plan This is something that I bang on about and for me is where all great websites must start, the plan. Before you build a web site make sure that you plan a great strategy for how you are going to get targeted customers to your site and how you are going to convince them to buy from you. This involves identifying your target customers including their demographics and how you can find ways to appeal to them. You will also need to plan how you will move users from the page they land on to the page where you will make the sale and how you will get customers to contact you with ease.

6) Design Now a lot of designers would have design and aesthetics high up on the list and I will agree that it is an important element of a great web design. However it must not be the primary attribute of your great website. Yes it’s nice to view something that looks good but if it fails to generate any income into your business then it is not doing its job. Good looking design must complement the real reason for having a web site and that is to promote your business and to create opportunities to sell your product or service.

5) Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) In a competitive market place you now need to make sure that you are well placed on the major search engines for your chosen keywords. Your potential customers no longer reach for the Yellow Pages to look for a service, instead they now go to Google, Yahoo & Bing. Search Engine Optimisation must be a consideration when planning your site as at this stage it is easiest to implement a good SEO plan. Make sure that your site is well coded with good use of keyword rich title and H1 tags, use different meta descriptions for each page and get as many quality inbound links as possible and you will be on the way to having a great SEO web site.

4) Speed of Loading The major search engines and especially Google now include the speed that a web site loads as a factor in the ranking they give a site. Slow sites are now penalised and fast loading ones are pushed up the rankings. So how fast is your site? The average user will click away from a site within 7 seconds if it hasn’t loaded up so you need to ensure you do everything to ensure you site loads fast. Consider if you really need a lot of images and if so make sure that you compress them using a good program like Fireworks. Other things you can do is compress your site include minimizing external requests by combining your JavaScript files and by combining CSS files and by having a well coded web site (without tables!!!)

3) Ease of Use You have to make sure that your site is easy to use and that the person who is using it can get to the information in the minimum amount of clicks. With the amount of choice on the web, internet users are lazy and will quickly go to one of your competitor’s site if they cannot get what they want straight away. Make sure you have well designed navigation, that the important pages are linked to from the home or landing pages and that you have a good sitemap. This will keep users clicks to a minimum and because they will be able to find what they want they will be more likely to stay on your site and choose your business over your competitors.

2) Content Great content makes a great website! If you have a website with great content then you will attract visitors that are likely to come back and visit your site over and over again. Overtime this builds the trust that is necessary for someone to do business with you. The key is to write great content that is relevant and useful for your target audience. Think to yourself what your ideal customer (which you have defined in step no 7) would like to know more about and then write about it. You can either create static pages of relevant content or you might find it easier to write blog posts on the important subjects. An important note is that you need to keep on writing great content and keep updating your website on a regular basis so that your site visitors have something new to read every time they visit. What great content can you add to your site right now?

1) Conversion The number 1 thing that your great web site must do is convert the visitors on your site into customers. There has to be something on your site that builds trust in the end user and then prompts them to contact you and ultimately do business with you. There are several ways that you can achieve this including good use of call to action buttons such as ‘click here for Free 30 day trial’ which have been shown to have a very positive influence on site conversions . Good copywriting on your site is also a must with the language that you use prompting the visitor to perceive you as experts in your field whilst also talking about how you can solve their problems. A well-designed web site will also contribute massively to helping you to convert visitors to customers as with good planning you can actively move site visitors down a designated path before prompting them to contact you. If you are not getting enough conversions on your site then implement these strategies and analyse the results to see the improvement.

These 7 important parts form the basis for how you can have a web site that is not just good or OK, but great. Please feel free to leave your comments about what you think of this article.

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