6 essentials for a web site - a quick checklist

With millions of sites out there in every niche and genre, it's important to remember a few basic web site rules to make sure your clients/users are getting the most out of your site and it's serving its purpose - be it getting leads, online sales or ad revenue.

Here's a quick checklist of 6 things your site must have:

1. Calls to action - I rate this #1. Calls to action are multiple series of steps that drive your users to do something you want them to. A site without calls to action is like an expensive magazine advertisement without your contact details.

Most successful websites are those that tell users what to do next. If you're selling a service or product, then a description of the service/product followed by "Click here for more information" or "Click here to buy this product" will get you multiple times conversion than just a little "Contact us" link in some corner.

Sounds simple, but surprisingly, "Calls to action" are something that most websites forget to pay attention to.

2. Multicolored designs - The other day I happened to be at a web design workshop where 5 web sites were shown on a massive projector screen to about 500 people and they were asked to rate the sites from 1 to 10 based on their liking of the design. 4 were uni-colored (use of one predominant color) and one was multi-colored (a mix of several colours). Predictably, the multicolored site won.

You've got to remember that sites based on one predominant color will look good to people who love that color. So make sure that your site has a good multicolored theme on a white background. Compare my latest Party Mania design to that of Michael Magill.




3. Navigation regulation- Make sure your users follow the hierarchy of links you want them to. Drop down menus were a rage when they first came in for the same reason. A website, unlike any other medium gives you complete control of what you want your users to see when - make use of that. If you want a user to first know that you're a Google certified company and then go to your PPC page, then name your page "Google certified PPC management" and then give a link saying "View packages". This way a user definitely knows you're Google certified.

Plus, make sure every page on your website is mentioned on your sitemap. Although not very popular today, some users and almost all search engines still use sitemaps.

4. Page coding - Make sure your web pages have well defined title tags, meta tags and alt tags. Most important are "title tags". In less than 8 words define what a page is about. Make sure you use keywords that you think people will search for. Duplicate title tags are a major mistake that websites make. Meta tags are not so much in use with top search engines but you must use them anyway for a few that do and for directories. Alt tags define images and with image searches becoming widely used, use alt tags to define images.

5. Grab those users' details - Another one that I see highly ignored on most websites. Ask users for their contact details by offering some free stuff. Anyone who's come to your website and really liked it will be happy to stay updated with new products/service or news. This is undoubtedly the best way to increase your usership. A simple form asking people to "subscribe to your mailing list" for your next blog, new products, service enhancements or news will do wonders. Give your users multiple ways to stay in touch with you. RSS, contact forms, mailing lists, blogs are a few.

6. Content - Ultimately it all boils down to content. If people love what they see/read on your site, they'll take your seriously. Needless to say, make sure the spellings are immaculate, tenses, grammar are all perfect and target your content to your audience. A site catering to the UK wouldn't do very well with words like "color" or "favor". Get your content written by language experts, make sure it's concise and to the point. At the same time, make sure you use keywords that people will be searching for within your content to help search engines relate your site to those keywords.

Have an Internet Business Idea? Read this

by A Sandhu - CEO, Modulus Systems

Introduction:

We get ideas when we're inspired, when we see things functioning around us. The most primitive, yet most effective business ideas involve improving an existing competitor's product or service. Because then you don't need to worry if it'll work. It's already working. In such cases you only rely on your ability to create a better, more advanced product or service and then perhaps the finance and expertise to market and distribute it, not chance.

But when you're struck by that one innovative, out of the world yet simple, never tried before idea, you need to answer a few questions to find out whether it's really sustainable, executable and profitable.


1. Is there a need in the market or is there a void? There being a demand in the market is one thing, but there being a complete void in the market is another. The greatest businesses are based on voids. A void that your product will fulfil. Something people always wanted, whether consciously or sub-consciously but it never existed. Good ideas make use of market demand, but best ideas make use of market voids. This means your customers might not always know that they need your service until they know about it.

Eg:
a. PeopleForever.org - We've conceptualised this website to fill a similar void. An emotional outlet that's so desperately required. People pay their condolences on someone's demise on newspapers' comments sections. The rest who feel the need to express, don't let it out at all. Where should they? PeopleForever.org aims to fill the void here. When you feel like letting your heart out, letting the world know how you felt about Ishmeet Singh (deceased Indian singer), where do you go? You come to PeopleForever, write about Ishmeet, pay condolences to his family, get encyclopedic information about his life and get in touch with people like you who loved him.


2. Do you have the finance to develop your product or service to marketable standards? Without a great product/service and a good budget to develop and market it, you'll only expose your great idea, probably to be picked up by your competitors, who might be able to develop and market it better than you. Wait till you get the finance, leave no stones unturned to develop it to the highest standards and once that is done, make sure your clientèle knows where to find your product or service.

3. Does your idea have the ability to generate cash? A lot of it? What is your revenue model? You might have a great idea for people interested in "squid recipes". It might be something that most people interested in squid recipes will want to buy. But will that ever make you enough money to sustain the production costs, salaries etc? Maybe not. However, an innovative idea that applies to millions of Italian food lovers, might be financially more viable.

When talking about online businesses, it's very important that the revenue model is decided and very carefully gauged. If you have a web site, you'll either sell a product or advertising space on it, or a service via it. Your revenue generation will depend on your product/service's price competitiveness, profit margin, ability to convert onlookers into customers, your web site's easy navigation and design.

If your revenue model is advertising only, then you will need to generate a lot of traffic to break even. Will your site ever be able to generate enough traffic to pay back the development costs, marketing and ongoing salaries? It should be calculated before-hand how many visitors will the site attract in the best case scenario; what'll make them come back? what does it mean financially. Is it all worth investing so much time, money and effort?

Note: An online business idea with advertising as the only revenue model requires much greater conviction and innovation compared to e-commerce based sites. In the latter's case, if you have a good margin to be made off your sales, then you can afford expensive pay per click advertising campaigns and work to improve your conversion rates, whereas an advertising revenue dependent site has to cover that in terms of bringing out a compelling innovative idea and generating user stickiness.

Make sure you've done your market research and again, have the money to market the idea to generate the quantity of sales you're looking for to make profit. There's nothing worse than investing months in developing a website based on "what you think is" a innovative idea and finding out that a top-class web site exists, doing exactly what you want to. Market research is imperative.

Once you know you've discovered a treasure chest (great idea), make sure you don't let it pass lightly. Make the most of it, explore every venue and give it your 100%.

If you're an online entrepreneur or have a great startup idea, the following sites may be of interest.
1. tradevibes.com
2. younoodle.com
3. killerstartups.com
4. crunchbase.com

Have I missed something? Feel free to comment.