10 Steps to Building a Click-Ready Website

6) Develop content that is Web-enabled

People don't read Website content like they do offline media. Keep your paragraphs short, no more than two to three sentences, build in white space with your content, include links in your pages -don't try to tell your whole marketing story on your site

- get people to call you (hello the telephone still works!), email or fill out a profile form (see below).

7) Make your site permission-based marketing ready

I love Seth Godin's "Permission Marketing" book http://www.permission.com/ and we recommend it to all of our clients - he champions building a long term relationship with a customer by asking their permission to continue to market to them and incorporating value/information in all marcom (marketing/communcation) processes.

8) Ensure your site is optimized for Search Engines

Identify 8-12 keywords that people will use to find your site, then incorporate these keywords in your site content (to drive relevancy with s/engine spiders/bots) and then manually submit
your site to the top ten search engines. We generally don't recommend most of the free or $19.99 specials available.

Getting listed on page 75 of 350 pages won't really drive qualified traffic to your site. You need page 1-3 listings on the top ten engines to really drive qualified traffic. And, this typically requires incorporating some very specialized processes and technologies.

This is the way we do it at
http://www.wolfblast.com and it works extremely well for our
clients.

9) Delve into your log server files

To uncover "digital tracks" made through your Website - your log files are raw files that show how and from where (in most cases) people accessed your Website, where they went on your Website, how long they stayed, etc. Web Trends is the defacto industry standard, http://www.webtrends.com/default.htm/ but we use and recommend a market-experienced firm in Europe, Fantomaster, Ltd.
to our clients http://www.fantomaster.com/ - they have a suite of Search Engine products that can be downloaded for free or
purchased.

10) Think global in your overall site design

The greatest Internet growth is occurring outside North America, so it is essential to build a site that can be accessed easily by people around the world.

What issues do you need to look at? Load
times are very important (again). Develop content that avoids colloquialisms that may not be understood by others who may not speak the same language. You may want to make your site content available in diverse languages. There are a number of emerging applications that will facilitate this process and ensure your ecommerce capabilities can be utilized by all.

That's it... Follow these handy tips and ensure your Website is Click-Ready!