Having text on your web page is critical for organic search engine optimization. Unique, original, keyword rich content is the key to make your website search engine friendly. Use these words to draw in your customer and convince them to purchase. These same words will be spidered and indexed by the search engines and make your website available for search.

You are writing your content for two audiences. Use keyword rich content for the search engines. Engaging and informative content is for converting visitors into buyers. It takes both to make a successful website.

Develop a content growth strategy for your website. Don’t just create a website and forget about it. Fresh information offers an incentive for visitors and search engine spiders to keep returning. Use blogs, press releases, articles and new product sections as ways to regularly grow your website content.

Natural SEO is more than adding keywords into your website content. Keywords are how people think and search for what you offer. Use these keywords to attract attention and engage your visitors. You Engaging SEO writing will attract visitors as they search and then engage them once they arrive.

For SEO to be truly effective it needs to focus both on attracting targeted visitors and then to engage them with compelling words that answer the question arriving people are searching for. The voice, tone, and formality needs to speak to your audience in a way they understand.

Adding a blog to your website is a great way to attract search engine spiders. Each post should be enriched with keywords that are focused on your topics.

The index page is also known as the home page, front page, default page or main page. This is the main arrival page for visitors needs to quickly tell visitors what your website offers. The home page acts as the index to the entire site and is the starting point for visitors. It typically has navigation that links to all the major sections of the website.

A well written home page greets a visitor with solutions to their problem. It is organized to be quickly scanned. It shows how you are different and why your solutions are the best.

The home page is the most important page in business web design. It is the page that first greets someone to your website. A visitor will spend 3-5 seconds scanning your home page and then decide to enter your site or leave in a click. Your home page is also the most valued page by the search engines as they look for keywords.

What should your index page do?

1. Answer the Question: A visitor comes to your site with an assortment of questions, but they all add up to the same thing. Can you help me with my problem? This means when writing to your customer, you need to address THEIR concerns. Talk about solutions not your product or service.
2. ABC Text: What are the ADVANTAGES, BENEFITS, and CONVENIENCES of using your product or service? This is the heart of what a home page needs to say. The question that a visitor asks is what can you do for me that your competition won’t? Remember write about how you can help your customer and not so much about your company.
3. Call to Action: You should place action words somewhere prominent. Use words such as SIGN-UP NOW, Request for a FREE Quote, Talk with our experts now! Using short phrases with an immediate word encourages the visitor to make a quicker decision. Figure out what you want from the customer and encourage them to do it!

Branding is how you make your company memorable. Your logo is a visual icon of your branding. You use your logo on your website, business cards, letterhead, brochures and in your email. A great logo is memorable, creates a visual impact and helps your company become easily remembered. So, what makes a great logo?

It is simple, distinctive, represents the company and has the illusion of action.

1. Simple means that it is not overly complex, can be reduced to a small size on a business card and doesn’t have many complex and competing elements. Simple also means good contrast and a bold look.
2. Distinctive means being unique and memorable, graphic (not just letters), not being cluttered in look and something that has a unique look. The colors, shape and font should be used in combination to help the business stand out and not blend in.
3. Represents the company and is meaningful and appropriate for the company.  It should have permanence so it won’t have to be changed.
4. Illusion of action means the logo has the appearance of motion and doesn’t just sit there. The challenge here is to keep it simple while still showing action.

A simple great logo may not be easy or quick to create, but it is powerful in your company’s branding for marketing strategies or Internet marketing.

You have a steady flow of visitors coming to your website, but they just leave without doing anything. Why? You have a professional looking design. You check your traffic stats and people are finding you what seems like the right phrases. What could be wrong?

Here are 6 possible causes for visitors just leaving.

1. Wrong audience: Are you attracting people that are even interested in what you offer? Perhaps you are not using the right keyword phrases to attract the right visitors?
2. No clear action: The action you want taken should be clear from the instant a visitor arrives. Locate the call-to-action above the fold so it is visible without scrolling down. Tell your visitors what to do. The first word in the call to action text should be an action verb like: Buy now, Get a quote, etc.
3. Offer not visible: Use big call-to-action buttons that will clearly stand out. Website visitors take just a few short seconds to make a decision of what they want to do. If they don’t see what to do, then they will quickly move on.
4. Too many Offers: A page should not have more than 3 possible actions on it with only one being a primary action. It could be Buy now, learn more and sign-up now. Too many possible actions and visitors become confused and just hit the back button.
5. Not valuable enough: People will sign up or take action if there is clear value in it for them. If it is not compelling, then they will not take action.
6. Not easy: Perhaps you are requesting too much information, have too long of a sign-up process or you require registration before they can buy from you. Remove any barriers or surprises to make it easy for them to do business with you.

Every page should have a call-to-action. Developing your call to action is one of the first steps in planning your website. The call to action should be clear in the headlines, the navigation and in the organization of the website. A clear call to action gets results.

A website wireframe is a schematic view of your web page layout. This is kind of a “first draft” used in planning and organizing a web page. It is a skeletal rendering of how the web page elements fit together onto the page.

Wireframing is generally done with grayscale block diagrams that illustrate the overall navigation and blocks of elements such as images, content and functionality. The call-to-actions are strategically located. These are an organizing plan and not a design. They are done before any artwork is generated.

The term “wireframe” comes from the world of computer graphics and 3D animation. Here wireframes are used for prototyping and because they are quick to generate and they use a minimum of computer processing.

Using a planning wireframe will often generate new requirements and questions that hadn’t been thought of before. It forces you to think through your website’s functionality at the page level. We use creating a sitemap and wireframing as the first two steps in website design.

How to create your wireframe

1. Determine the basic layout such as how many columns the page will have. Should the navigation be along the top (horizontal) or on the side (vertical)?
2. Decide on the call to action for the page. Place it where it can be easily seen, preferably above the fold so it can be seen immediately by an arriving visitor.
3. Organize and place the page elements such as the header, footer, navigation, content objects, and branding elements. Group and prioritize the elements according to how you want them seen.
4. Label the navigation links, headings and content objects.
5. Use placeholders for text and images. Use dummy text such as lorem ipsum to show text areas.

The wireframe gives your web designer a visual guide to design from. This ensures the call to action and priority elements are placed on the page for maximum effectiveness.

It is not enough to get visitors traffic to your site. You need to design your website to encourage visitors to take an action. You need to design in your selling sequence to convert visitors into buyers. Or at least get them started into your conversion process.

A business website should be designed with a specific goal in mind. There should be the final action that you want your visitor to take online. You want to solve the core problem or need your customer has. Then build a selling sequence to address that need. This could be to buy, to request more information or to request a quote.

Think of your selling sequence as a sequential order of events that guides your prospect as they journey through your website. Start by getting their attention, and then create interest. Guide them through the benefits to generate desire. End with getting them to take a specific action. Plan your conversion process from first arrival to purchase. Each page should be designed with a clear action to be taken.

The sales funnel is a metaphor. We can visualize the sales process which is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. A large number of prospects will arrive to your site and yield a much smaller number of sales. The website sales funnel describes the process or steps that your website visitors go through from the moment they arrive at the site until they fulfill your goal.

Start by breaking your sales process down into steps or stages that each visitor who buys from you will pass through. Increasing the flow at any step will increase your final sales numbers.

Website statistics packages such as Google Analytics allow you to set-up a sales funnel or goals to track this data automatically. This way you can make changes to your website and watch the impact. This allows you to change and refine your website conversion rate over time.

Most businesses make big mistakes in creating their website. They will just put up information up about themselves and the products or services they provide. They depend on their visitors to wade through the information and sort out what they are interested in. This greatly reduces the business they get from their website.

1. Unclear Message: You have just 3 seconds to convince an arriving visitor that what you offer will be the solution they are seeking. Your home page needs to clearly state what you do and how it will benefit the visitor. People’s eyes are attracted to the page headline and they will scan the first paragraph. Make this first text powerful, active and attention getting.
2. No Action or Offers: If visitors leave your website without taking action, then what benefit is there to having them come to your site? Your website needs to convince visitors to take some sort of action. Another error is to have too many possible actions where you confuse a visitor and they just leave. Make your offer clear, visually important and visible to visitors when they first arrive.
3. No Traffic Strategy: “Build it and they will come” may work for an Iowa corn farmer (Field of Dreams), but it doesn’t work for business websites. Decide your traffic source such as organic search, pay-per-click or referral traffic before you start the design. Organic SEO is much more effective when designed into a site.
4. No Phone Number or Address: Some businesses hide behind an anonymous contact form without any phone number or address anywhere on the website. This makes visitors nervous about doing business with you. After all, what happens if something goes wrong? How can they reach you? They immediately suspect that you are not even a real business? Place your phone number and address on your home page AND on your contact page.
5. No About-Us Page: When someone comes to your website, they immediately want to learn more about who you are. In their mind, they are asking: “Why should I trust you?” The job of your about-us page is to answer that question. The about-us area for a website can be a single page or a section of pages, depending on your website. Read more: How to write an About-Us page.

Design of business websites is not meant to shock and awe an incoming visitor. Don’t get me wrong, business website design should get your attention. But when an arriving visitor comes to your website, they need to be able to immediately understand your offer. They need to intuitively be able to navigate around your site.

If a website is difficult to use, people will just leave. Your website has to have a certain predictability. Your visitor did not arrive looking for a lesson on how to consume your content. Use standard web conventions so visitors can easily evaluate your content and what you offer.

Predictability leads to trust, ease of use and satisfaction. Here is how you make your website predictable and comfortable for visitors.

1. Logo: Your logo, branding or name should be located in the upper left area of every page. Clicking on the logo should take you back to the home page.
2. Navigation: The main navigation is located near the logo and can be either vertically down the left side or horizontally across the top. These links should map out the primary pages or features of the site. These should all be internal site links.
3. Hyperlinks: Usually underlined and / or in a different color to stand out from other text. Only hyperlinks should have underlined text. Visited links should shift to a different color than the other links.
4. Buttons: Images that look like buttons should allow visitors to take action like submit, buy or take them to a new page.
5. Images: Photos and graphics have describing text (ALT text) or text immediately below the photo (captions). Clicking on small thumbnails will show a larger version of the photo.
6. Icons: Use standard visual symbols on your site to signify things like shopping cart, email, rss.
7. Security Login: Identity confirmations are done using a username and password system.
8. Search: Larger sites should have a search function based on text words used in the content.
9. Footer: Include copyright information, privacy policy, contact pages, sitemap and other helpful links at the bottom of the home page.

The term search engine friendly websites are used to describe a website that can be easily crawled and indexed by the search engines. Web designers will use this search engine friendly websites to describe the sites they sell. But what does this (or should this) really mean?

10 important attributes for a search engine friendly website.

1. Built with XHTML / CSS: Instead of using the older method of using tables common in HTML 4, text and other page elements are arranged using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). The code is simpler and easier for search engines to index.
2. Validated Code: This means validating code with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) validator to eliminate code errors. This means eliminating all errors in the underlying HTML code, making it easier for search engines to index a page.
3. Text Content: Designs need to incorporate text content on every page. Avoid doing all Flash websites or adding splash pages to websites because of the SEO implications.
4. Text Navigation: Providing HTML navigation links so that search engines can easily crawl the website. JavaScript or image based links are more difficult for search engines. Include text links to the primary pages at the bottom of each page.
5. Page URL: Naming pages with keywords or descriptive words rather than dynamic query strings.
6. File structure: Create a flat file structure and keeping the number of levels to a minimum. Extensive use of subdirectories and sub-subdirectories is harmful to rankings.
7. XML Sitemap: Include an XML sitemap to make it easy for search engines to locate all pages on the website.
8. Title / Description: Create unique and relevant title tags and description tags for each page.
9. Heading Tags: Include Heading tags in our designs. These can range from H1-H6. H1 tags are the most important for SEO.
10. Download Speed: All pages should be quick to download. Optimize page size and image sizes to allow a fast download speed. Search engines are applying importance to this.

Web design is meant enhance your message. It is not your message. It adds the emotional spark and inspires confidence. A flashy or showy design may be an attention getter, but it distracts a potential buyer from seeing what you have to offer.

There are three things a business website needs to do. It needs to be focused on your best buyer, it needs to create a professional image and it needs to get your visitor to take action. Great website design is not only pleasing to the eye; it communicates your message and guides the visitor toward action.

Best Buyer: The difference between a poor performing website and a successful online business is in how well you understand your customer. Don’t make the mistake of trying to sell to everybody or you will appeal to no one. Instead focus on your best buyer. This is the one who is your ideal customer that most wants what you have to offer.

A visitor arrives to your website looking for something. It may a solution to a specific problem; it may be to learn or to purchase. You need to clearly understand why your best buyer came to your site and then give them what they are looking for.

Image: You need a design that gives you a professional image that makes you appear as a top player in your market. You want to demonstrate you are the best and logical choice to do business with. Branding and design are meant to convey emotion and affect the visitor at a subconscious level. Don’t let it over power your message.

Action: When a visitor arrives, they scan your website and need to instantly understand what you do and how to take action. The most important thing in any offer is that it be clear and concise. Grab your visitor’s attention with a button. The larger it is, the more visually important it is. Make it quick and visual for visitors to see what to do next. Don’t let them decide for themselves.

Remember, usability and utility, not the visual design, determine the true success or failure of your web-site. Use your design to enhance your message and build credibility.