We are now living in the Internet age. It’s essential for every business to have its own website. But a website that actually gets clients is not a simple as it seems.

A bad website is worse than no website at all. Not only will a bad website waste time and money on things like design and hosting, it will scare possible clients away from your business. To make your online presence work it is necessary to know what goes into a professional website.

Your website needs a purpose. That purpose may be an actual sale, getting names on a mailing list, or getting visitors to fill out a form for more information. Once you decide what your website’s purpose is, get your visitors to take action. Every page on your website must TELL your visitors to place their order, or fill out that form, or sign up for your mailing list.

Many visitors to your website will want to contact you. It is essential that every page contain your contact information. Make it easy for your web site visitors to contact you. The last thing people want to do is search around for a phone number or email address.

Take an honest look at your website. Is it easy to navigate through the site? It’s amazing how many sites are out there today that are cluttered and hard to navigate through. Even some big name corporations have unfriendly sites. When people get frustrated they leave. Make your site welcoming by making it easy to get around.

If you are looking into website design, chances are you have heard of SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is all about getting web browsers to find your site and put it up high on their list. When you search for something through any search engine, such as Google or MSN, you type a phrase into the browser and click. Up comes a long list, sometimes pages upon pages long, showing the results of your search. Most searchers don’t go past a few pages before they either quit or find what they want. The goal is to have your website up at the top of the list.

Search Engine Optimization is a gigantic subject that we can’t possibly cover here. There are books and resources available everywhere. However, we can cover some basics. Every web page has a title bar at the top. The title bar needs to contain the name of your company along with the page the viewer is on. You also want to make sure your content is rich with keywords for your business. Sites that look fancy and have a ton of graphics are not always the best for SEO. Keep your site simple and focus on good content. Don’t cram keywords into the content. Good content about your business will usually suffice, but it pays dividends to go over the text and make sure it has what you want.

There are other ways to improve your SEO. Using Meta Tags and Alt Tags are a good way to increase SEO.

Do your research before creating a website. There is so much information available online and at the library that you can spend months doing research. We don’t think you’ll need that long, but you do need to go into website building with a plan.