6 steps to an effective web site

Step #1. Ask yourself Why are you building a website or landing page?
What will be your expected conversions? E-commerce — adding an item to a shopping cart and beginning the checkout process. Lead generation — filling out a registration form to accept an offer (generally free) with the implicit understanding that this may lead someday to a sale. Branding/education — spending a significant amount of time examining and/or interacting with content on the site that the Home page is a gateway for Relationship — opting-in to receive communications from the brand/publisher on an ongoing basis. Membership — registering to actively use the site on an ongoing basis in exchange for either payment, an implied agreement to view advertising, or to allow one's activity data to be measured. Viral — telling personal and professional contacts about the Home page, perhaps via an email tool, blog links, word-of-mouth, etc.

Step #2. Selecting URLs
One big mistake is to assume that a home page or website for that matter can handle two or three different conversion goals.
Sorry but, if you are in business you must know that it is all about converting....
This is quite crucial. I recommend you to find a name that will reflect your main activity promoted on the landing page or your website, which means search engines will find your webpage based on the specific of the name and key word density of the same inside your main page. Consider having as many URL’s as you have activities, this will spawn additional traffic and direct visitors accordingly to their needs, thus growing your conversion rate.

Step #3. Demographic research
Get into your prospect's mind, who will be my client? Is my product or services suited for the demographic that I am reaching out with my communication strategy Create a profile of your perfect converter. If you have more than one, look at each profile and decide which the biggest market is. Then construct your home page for that particular one and ignore the ancillaries. Don't construct a page to appeal broadly across a wide variety of "typical" users. It won't appeal to anyone at all and your conversions will suffer. You have 0-8 seconds to convince visitors this page is for them and them alone. Here is the interesting part... At most they'll read 15-30 words.
Step #4. Graphic elements, layout, and form design
Make a list of all the specific elements that have to be included on the page such as your graphics, imagery (people don’t read) calls to action guiding to registration form or purchase page Have a strong sentance that say something like “ We Make It Happen” or "use a few "magic" key words Make sure that your phone number is displayed in a prominent location (not hidden), yes right at the top of your page so you don't have to spend 3 minutes finding it, remember they are only on your site for 0-8 seconds.

Step #5. Copywriting
Your headline copy. Like a newspaper or magazine editorial, the headline is the most important, make sure that it has a “newsworthy” appeal; chock and surprise your visitors Your calls to action need to be prominent Body copy: subheads, bulleted lists, guarantees, testimonials, explanations and descriptions, etc. Bad news! Only 15-20% of your visitors will read part of this copy.

Step #6. Testing, measuring, and tweaking
Make sure that Google Analytics or other measurement tools are setup on your site, then review the following: eCommerce — eg. Sales as a percent of total visitors. Lead generation — Leads as a percent of total visitors, estimated sales value per average lead generated by traffic source. Branding/education — Percent of total visitors who stay longer than 30 seconds, the percent over one minute. Relationship — Percent of return versus one-time visitors. Viral — Emails with tell-a-friend tools.