As you’ve seen, there are websites and there are websites. The ones that make it easy for you to find out what you want to know — and the rest. Here are 10 basic ways to make sure your website does its job:

• Define its goals: Show and tell? Show and sell? Explain your product? Build your brand?

• Optimise your website for search engines. Critical. Use the right keywords in the right way and the right density. Make sure you link with other popular websites. Learn how search engines test sites. Get professional help: this is tricky stuff.

• Get it professionally written. Web copy-writers know how to make sure your copy is ‘all killer, no filler’…helping qualify prospects and pull sales. They’ll make sure your copy talks TO your prospects not AT them.

• KISS: Keep it superbly simple. Avoid clutter. Make sure your graphics, especially Flash animations, are professionally executed so they load quickly and work properly. Use easy-to-read typefaces so your copy is easy to read. Stick to your subject, make your point clearly.

• Plenty of meaningful pictures: products, diagrams, staff, service, deliveries to support copy. Not just fluff, though.

• Don’t talk to everybody: it doesn’t work that way. Know your target market and speak specifically to them.

• Make it easy for prospects to buy. Phone numbers, address (both postal and real). Otherwise you’re an alien from cyberspace.

• Keep your information up to date. If you don’t care about yourself, your prospects certainly won’t. Keep your content fresh so visitors come back for more.

• Track and analyse traffic to your site: how many visitors does it turn into lookers, then buyers?

• Ensure your website  is technically 100%. Avoid broken pages, servers and other errors that make visitors leave. Nobody is more impatient than a website visitor.

And above all (sneaking in an 11th point) make sure everything in your website rewards your visitors for this time and tells them:

“Buy mine not theirs, because…”

There’s obviously a lot more to this than we can cover here. So please call us on 1300 660 683  to discuss your needs and we’ll show you how we can put together a website that really earns its keep.