In preparation for launching a whole kit for customers of my main business, I have been giving some serious thought to which strategies and ideas a company should be most interested in applying to its own website. Taking into consideration effectiveness, ease-of-implementation, cost, and applicability for different industries, I’ve put together a first-draft sampling of five that I feel must be known by every business owner. None of them are a quick fix, and some may sound obvious, but none of them require you to be a tech wizard or an amazing artist.

1) Start a Newsletter

Pay attention to your mail box. Every week you probably receive a grocery store catalogue, bargain newsletter, or similiar information item. Stores, including international brands, continue to deliver these week after week because if done properly they work. However this is far from a perfect system. How many of the fliers in your mailbox are you actually interested in? How many do you simply throw out? Every single flier represents marketing dollars for the company, and quite a few are simply going in the trash.

By starting an e-mail newsletter that your visitors and customers can willfully subscribe to allows you to reach the people that want to listen to you, and to do so for only the cost of writing the newsletter copy. Forget about printing thousands of flier that are destined for the landfills. Your virtual newsletter has no printing costs and will keep your company and your latest offers in the minds of your most interested customers. Just don’t overdo it and keep your newsletter opt-in. The last thing you want to be associated with is spam!

2) Share Your Knowledge With Your Audience

The internet has made major differences in the way customers shop and the options they have. One such key difference is information. With virtually everyone in your market having online access, obtaining detailed and impartial information on a product or service is easier than ever. Rather than trying to mask this information with marketing hype, why not turn your website into an educational resource? You’ll have potential customers using your site to learn more about the product, get excited about it, and when its time to purchase they’ll come to you, the expert!

It’s about more than just a really extended sales ad though. Having real educational pages is something search engines go nuts about - they love content. This is why blogs do so well in search engine rankings - they are content-oriented. This is the kind of optimization that you can’t buy. Go ahead and inform your visitors. You’re adding value to the site, the product, and you get to share your passion for what you do!

3) Say it Clearly and Concisely

I have a lot of personal emotion invested into this point because I’ve made this mistake multiple times and paid dearly for it. There’s nothing worst than painstakingly writing the most awesome copy ever and finding that it’s totally bombing. Well there is worst actually - writing that copy, not measuring it’s success (see point 5), and using it even though it’s a flop. I’ve done this too and received miserable results.

Writing for the net is part science and part art. First you have to entice the visitor in whatever microperiod of time studies today are showing you have their attention for. If you fail at this crucial first point then the rest of your site really doesn’t matter. Achieving it takes patience, testing, and viewing the site from the perspective of a visitor. Nice clear headlines (preferably written using proper HTML header tags for crucial search engine categorization) often draw the reader in. Like with most aspects of websites, not everything works the same for everyone. Spend some time reading about the basics, but then practice, experiment, and of course measure.

Avoid massive paragraphs, particularly on your front page. As wonderful as your writing abilities are, people want to know in words (not paragaphs) what you are offering and why they shouldn’t close their browser window. Sell them on that first and leave the long-winded explanations to the product details pages where the people interested in them can find them. Use bullets and images to help space things out and prevent the visitor from being overwhelmed. Creating your front page is a lot like writing your resume actually - you want to get the key points out there, be brief, and don’t clutter the page.

To make things confusing, writing effectively doesn’t always mean keeping it short. You can provide informative content that users want to read and still have a lot of it. It’s all about presenting that information when the visitor is ready for it and that means knowing your audience and testing your copy.

4) Invest in Online Marketing - In the Right Places

Having a website is meaningless without traffic. If you are a brick and mortar business then you may be promoting the site to customers in-store already, but what about bringing in new customer? If you are an online company then your website is your source of business. Either way there are many ways to promote online and almost as many ways to waste marketing dollars for low return.

This is where putting some serious systematic thought and action into online marketing can have overpowering results. Every single website is unique so different people will have drastically different results from different online advertising. As always the key is to try a bunch on a low scale and home in on the ones that work and generate targetted traffic. Not to leave you starting from scratch here are just some of the options out there.

• Advertising on a specific highly relevant website.
• Becoming known as a trusted expert in a forum community.
• Blogging about your subject matter.
• Encouraging visitors to add your site to their favorite social bookmarking service.
• Getting listed in local website or subject matter directories.
• Joining a context-driven advertising program like Adwords.
• Offering an RSS feed.
• Posting some free product or service (opens up entire new traffic sources).
• Releasing a press release.
• Requesting links from well-known websites on your subject.
• Selling goods on an auction or marketplace site.

Some of the above are easy to test, and some are not. No doubt many will fail for your particular business, but the few that succeed can be a goldmine. In all cases do not ever spam or otherwise break the Terms of Service of whatever resource you plan to utilize. Be creative too - every type of site has its own special advertising gem waiting to be found.

5) Always Test Changes

Getting it right the first time is highly unlikely. Whenever you add a new page, feature, or write some crucial sales copy, always test test test. Without actual test data all you have to go on is speculation. Does the headline that emphasises the quality of your service do the best, or the one discussing your unique expertise? Seemingly small changes can have huge impacts, particularly on the parts of the page that decide whether your visitor will keep reading. See the F-Pattern for Reading Web Content for an excellent study on how visitors read information on the web.

Testing is easier said than done of course, as you need a way to track the test. To be accurate the two test conditions should really be conducted and measured simulateneously. One way of doing this is an A/B split test where half your visitors have one version of your site presented to them, and the other half are given another. You then measure the performance of each page in terms of what you are trying to achieve, such as more sales, more downloads, or more sign-ups to your service. A small change can make a drastic difference. The ads on this site are a great example and as I strive to optimize the results while maximizing the usability of the site you may notice different ad positions and types over different periods of time.

How do you perform such testing? It depends how you run your site. If you have it professionally managed for you by a company such as Tilted Pixel then it’s just a matter of asking for the functionality. An experienced website provider should be able to supply the functionality at a reasonable charge. If you manage your website yourself or have knowledge of a web programming language you could always aim to write a solution yourself. For a programmer a basic A/B setup is quite easy to write. There are also third-party statistics packages which offer various metrics for performing such tests. My understanding is that the free Google Analytics package does just that.

Waiting. It’s a fact of life. You’ll wait in line, you’ll wait to get somewhere, you’ll wait for a package in the mail. Waiting eventually brings on frustration, and that brings on complaining. Well complaining can be fun and I like to indulge a little myself sometimes, but…

Wouldn’t it be better to turn this time into something that will radically change your life for the better?

A little dramatic? Perhaps, but not far off the mark. I did this just yesterday on a flight and it came as easily as staring into space, shifting uncomfortably in my seat, or overpaying for a hamburger.

I accomplished it by picking up a book. Profound? Hardly. There is a little more than that to it, but not much. Specifically I made a conscious decision to learn something new in the 8 hours of my life that I would be devoting getting from point A to point B. Having made this simple and easy decision I packed accordingly, stuffing into my luggage Josh Gordon’s Selling 2.0 and The Wine Brats’ Guide to Living with Wine for a lighter read.

I arrived at my destination with 5 new ideas to immediately implement into my business sales process, along with information on how to build a wine cellar cheap.

The lesson here is that while you can’t always (or even often) choose your environment, you sure as heck can drastically alter the results you receive from your situation. The best part is that the line between complacent inaction and amazing achievement is very thin. You stand on it everytime you choose between staring at the neck of the passenger in front of you, watching the in-flight movie, getting work done, or picking up a book. All it takes to end up on the great side is shifting your balance a little towards it.

I highly recommend choosing educational reading above all else. The absolute best part of putting wasted time like this to good use is that you haven’t committed to getting the other mundane but somehow important stuff done during it, such as answering e-mails, washing dishes, or writing a report. The time has already been written-off as wasted, it’s sitting there in the discarded inventory bin, and now you have the opportunity to seize it to get all that reading done that you’ve been putting off. A famous quote by an author whose name escapes me states “The people who complain the most about not having enough time are those who waste the most of it”. This is your chance to eliminate that “I don’t have the time” excuse and learn new concepts and ideas that can literally reinvent your future.

Another great task to do when in a waiting situation is the infamous goal planning. Putting pen to paper and setting or revising goals for your business and your life is in my opinion one of the very few things that you could do which will have an even more lasting and beneficial impact on your life as education.

Stop dreading the Wait and make it the most productive and insightful time you have!

If you are running or considering starting an online business then your website design and content are key factors. Before you spend thousands on a Flash monstrosity come take a look at the underwhelming visuals of big name sites and why you may wish to go their route. In today’s line-up we have the following multi-billion dollar companies, all of which have no problems affording flashier graphics:

• Google
• Amazon.com
• e-Bay / PayPal
• Royal Bank of Canada (Canada’s Most Respected Corporation of 2005)

Wow, where is the flash? I’ve been mulling this simple look over and have come up with some key points that may answer the question.

1) Information Has Made a Major Comeback

For a while there the internet was trying very hard to be like the TV, and graphics often came before information, compatibility, and usability. However the intention of the original HTTP web was information based, and that’s how HTML was designed. This is what the web is returning to and for some companies it’s really paying off.

Google’s claim to fame is being able to intelligently deliver the content that people want. This technology extends to AdSense, which is making a fortune by displaying advertising that visitors are actually interested in. Amazon has a similiar story with their incredibly aggressive and effective delivery of personalized recommendations in various forms. They also have an associates program that capitalizes on the power of human beings recommending books that they have read, enjoyed, and wish to share with others. Both these companies are ultimately connecting visitors with products and services that they desire in a way that is a feature rather than nuisance.

A simple layout makes information easier to find and highlights it as the star of the show. More and more people familiar with the web know what they are looking for and are used to being able to find it easily. The graphics take a step into the background, working to provide a calm and pleasing experience, enhancing important information, but never trying to become the star of the show.

2) These Companies Realize People are Human

A slick design that makes you go “ooooh”, but which makes the information you are looking for difficult to find is for an art exhibit. If you are attempting to turn visitors into customers then content should (almost) never suffer for aesthetics. Web users give you a very short period of time during which your site either convinces them to stay or go elsewhere, so you better be easy to use and easy to understand.

Instead of focusing on creating complex graphical layouts, successful information-focused businesses are coming up with complex ways of making it easy for users to find the information that they want. Again, Amazon and Google are phenomenal examples.

3) Devices of Every Shape and Size Are Now Connected

It used to be that creating a mostly-compatible design meant designing for a minimum resoluton of whatever the current version of Windows came with. This is no longer the case, with alternative and widely different devices such as PDAs, cellphones, and televisions all connecting. Simplicity pays off in a big way for easy compatibility and a uniform browsing experience across all technology.

With so much of the world now using the net on so many different devices and in so many different configurations, leaving out a relatively small percentage of users can translates to large dollar figures.

4) A Certain Air of Legitimacy

This may be a controversial point, but I firmly believe that in some lines of business having a website that is too nice can cost credibility. Now that everyone can purchase a graphical template for $60 and have a site up, seeing masses of gradients can actually be a warning sign - just like a salesman that looks a little too slick. Again it comes down to context, but accounting and legal firms have long adopted a dull and professional look over colorful eye candy. There’s a lesson in that.

Get excited about simple design, but don’t forget the business basics - know your market!

Universal advice and universal truths are very rare. I have named some very successful companies that use simple layouts that put content at the centre of attention. Don’t read this article blindly and immediately revamp your looks. Each business and target market is unique, and for some products and demographics it makes perfect sense to be flashy. How boring would a hot new toy look if the website design consisted of a single image and tables with assorted pastel backgrounds? Put some thought into where your business fits and what strategy may work best for you!