Fifty-eight percent of people looking for a solution researched it on the web before seeking information by other means. Forty-five percent turned to friends and family.
-PEW Internet and American Life Report

Does your web site provide solutions? Do you make it easy for visitors to interact with your brand?

 Here are 11 things to consider before designing a new site or rehabbing an old one:

1- Determine who (customer and prospects, employees, stockholders) is most important to impress when that visitor lands on your main page. For 95% of organizations, it will be the customers and prospects.

2- Create target profiles of the most important types of prospects, the ones that will have the most positive impact on your business. Keep this in mind; if you want to influence different types of targets create a web site for each.

3- Decide what information is most important to this targeted group in helping them decide to use your product or service. And determine what you want the visitor to do while on your site and after leaving your site.

4- Be sure to include “calls to action” in the copy.

5- Try to create the copy so that it differentiates you from your competition. Strong value propositions are essential.

6- Give people a reason to visit your website often. BLOGS, online tools, user-uploaded media and special offers all work.

7- Pay attention to keywords your target may use in search engines, and be sure that they are in your copy.

8- Be sure that your web developer creates a flowchart that makes navigation easy and follows it in construction of the site.

9- Make sure that the site design (look and feel) is appropriate to your target.

10- After you launch, don’t just wait for visitors; promote your site.

11- Use a web analytics program (www.google.com/analytics is free) to measure the effectiveness of your web site. Make corrections as needed.