BlodgettVentures.com

Every good business must have a website. Here's what you need to know about website design and content.

Sites are used in two basic ways:

• A web domain to send people/prospects when they want to know if you have a website, as well as learn more about you/your company.
• A site that is searched for and found through common internet search processes such as Google, Yahoo! or MSN.

Clients will use it as a ready reference when they want to show others why they're paying you the big bucks, and they'll actually use it to look up your phone number and contact information. It's kind of like an online brochure, only more. It is a key component of your branding effort. It can pay big dividends in credibility if the site is good, and, if the site is bad, it can be a huge negative.

I know a business that spent close to $100,000 on their website. I know lots of companies that have spent $15-30,000. And, I know a number of companies that spent under $5,000. Which have the best sites? None of them!
Nearly all of them aren't worth a thing because they don't provide the content that their clients and prospects want/need to create the desire to initiate an inquiry to the company, much less buy something. Even worse, the sites aren't search engine optimized so the buying community can't find them unless they know the correct URL.

What's in a good site? First, a Good Web Name (URL, Domain Name, Website Address). A good web name should be short and easy to remember. Whenever possible, it should also align with your business theme. For instance, we have three sites: www.FIRSTBRANDinc.com for our marketing corporation. For our consulting business, I have www.BlodgettVentures.com. For my book, I chose www.YourOwnConsultingBusiness.com. The names fit the criteria.

JONESCUSTOMERSERVICECONSULTING.com would have it's challenges, but JonesCSEnterprises.com or JonesCustomerSolutions.com would be better, or even JonesConsultants.com.

Relevant, Search Engine Friendly Content. Content is absolutely vital to a good website, and there are several types of content:

1. Relevant Text with Key Words and Phrases. About your business. About you. About what you offer, and how you deliver it. Benefits to the prospect. Testimonials. Appealing Articles. Stories. Resources. Links to other relevant websites. How to contact you. The key to good text in a website is that it not only is interesting, informative, educational, enlightening and pertinent to your field but it also is Search Engine Friendly. That means that at least 10% of the content contains popular key words and phrases that someone searching for you on the Internet would use.

2. Search Engine Friendly (SEF) Text. It should contain keywords that people are currently using to search for information about the field. Remember earlier when we searched Google keywords and found words relating to your field? The most popular ones should be incorporated, where appropriate into the content of your site.

3. Search Engine Friendly (SEF) Meta Tags. These are Title, Description and Keywords embedded into the html programming code in your site. They are invisible to the public, but important to Search Engine Spiders and Crawlers. You want these to be properly done for each page of your website. Much is written about Meta Tags, and whole semester college courses are out there to teach the science and practice of Search Engine Optimization. In short, though, you need a Title Tag on each page of code that describes what that page is about; a Description Tag that is a bit longer and describes what's in the content; and finally, a list of Keyword Tags on each page that include those popular search words and phrases that you found in your Google Adwords research. That's it. You'll generally need a Web professional to carry out this part, but if you've done your homework and provided the words, it will be low cost.

4. Photos, Video. Use high-quality (relevant!) photos that have been optimized for the Web. An optimized photo is one that has been converted from a large .jpg image to a smaller .jpg image without sacrificing significant image quality. Web pages display and refresh faster with optimized photos. We've all been annoyed by those pages that take forever to load! You can use free Web tools like Picasa (google.com) or Web Resizer (webresizer.com) to accomplish this. Your professional website developer will do it,  or a friend with Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements software.
Video on websites is becoming very popular and can work well, again if it's professionally done and optimized. On the web, amateurish sites are quickly abandoned, so plan to do this right.
Good Design. The best way to check this out is to search your competition as well as other consulting sites. You'll see what you like and don't like from the standpoint of good design. Besides great content and related photos, is the information organized logically and intuitively? Does the site engage and motivate to you to read the content and check out every page. Stickiness is a term used to describe a website's ability to keep the visitor interested and on site as long as possible. You want visitors to see, read and explore your entire site, so you know it has to be good to do this. Think Sticky!

5. Logical, Functioning Navigation. First, does the navigation take you effortlessly from page to page, topic to topic, link to link. Are there broken links that don't go anywhere? Not good. Are there links that take you offsite, but don't link you back? Not good, either. You'll want your site to keep your visitors at home, so links pages need to open within the page on your site and easily get the visitor back to the page on which they began.

6. A Call to Action. A good website has a Call to Action, meaning something for the visitor to do next, before leaving. The simplest of these calls is to Join Your Mailing List or Sign-up for Your Newsletter. Or take advantage of an offer that is only on your Website. Or presents an Offer With a Specific Duration. Make them get in touch with you, either by email or phone.