Constructing A Website That Works

posted by Ted on January 22, 2012

Before you even consider starting to build a new website, you need to think very carefully about exactly what you are going to include on it. It’s very important to find your niche and focus all your content on it. As you can imagine, a visitor or potential customer will not want to wade through fishing tackle supplies when they came to your site looking for luggage. Even more importantly, the search engines won’t be able to distinguish what it is you are trying to sell and therefore won’t be able to rank it well for any of your products. The more products you have on your site means that they have to compete with each other to be viewed when what you really want is a fewer amount of related products that complement and enhance each other.

Here is a basic list of things that you must consider when creating your website.

1.  The website needs to be clearly laid out, with separate pages for different topics within the overall subject matter.

2.  The site will need to focus on a specific subject which is aimed at a distinct and targeted audience. Both outgoing and incoming links to relevant, yet non-competing, websites should be included.

3.  Diverse pages should link into each other where relevant.

4.  There should be plenty of quality content packed with useful information.

5.  Any affiliate or referral links should be sprinkled throughout the web page in relevant, non-obtrusive places. It’s a good idea to track and test these links on an ongoing basis to see which ones have the highest conversion rate.

6. The keywords and key phrases should be carefully researched in order to help attract visitors and improve positioning within the search engines.

7. Studies show that it takes a potential customer an average of 5 to 7 visits to a website before making a purchase. This means it’s important to include a way to collect your visitors’ contact information in a prominent place on your website.  If you offer them a discount code or special gift for signing up for your email list, you can help to ensure that their eventual purchase is from you.

8.  And finally, it’s important to include a sitemap to make it easier for visitors to move around the website and find what they need. A sitemap literally acts as a map of your overall website. Visitors can always refer to this page to see where they are and navigate through your pages with ease. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by adding a sitemap you will be saving your visitors’ time.

Your sitemap has an even more important function – it helps the search engine robots quickly find and index all the pages of your website.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of things on this list, they may take a little time to put together but they are not difficult by any means. Once they are in place, you can tweak and test your site and add new content to keep it fresh and interesting which in turn will keep the search engines ranking it and give your visitors a reason to keep coming back.

 

Tags:conversion rate,effective website,internet marketing,Site map,Sitemap,Web Design and Development,Web search engine,website optimization