One important point to keep in mind when planning your landing page is that customers don’t want to work when they come to your site.  If you have anything resembling work to your customer, you run a strong risk of losing their attention.  Wordy pages that cram too much content are overwhelming to the eye.  It is important to balance content with design.  Tease them with enough information that the average visitor will want ot click farther into the site to read more.

Here are some of the most important landing page content items to consider integrating into your website:

• Limited Navigation – don’t have too many navigation buttons and drop-down menus.
• Quick scan details – these are typically short headlines that live in a sidebar to attract your customer’s attention.
• Images – Use images! Break up the text with images, but make sure they are relavent to your content.
• Bullet points – these can be helpful if appropriate to summarize what you are about.  Hyperlink them to more content within your site.
• Colors – Don’t be afraid to use color, but avoid the hippie tie-dyed rainbow…unless of  course you are selling hippie tie-dyed items!
• Ease the conversion – Make it easy for your customer’s to locate what they are looking for while minimizing the amount of work it takes for them to find it.

These are just the beginning to get you started.  For more suggestions, talk to your web designer and make sure he or she has a plan.

About The Author:

Jason Roberts is the president of NetFUSION Studios Web & Graphic Design. NetFUSION Studios consists of a collection of designers, programmers, and consultants from a variety of backgrounds. The company also offers eLearning content creation and curriculum development for businesses and community organizations.

We are now offering special packages for groups that need to get a quick web presence to promote activities and events.  Whether you are a permanent 9/12 group or if you are organizing just for summer events like Restoring Courage, NetFUSION Studios can help!

Some of the services we offer that may be appropriate for your group or event are:

> Web design and development
> Web site re-creation and deployment
> Search Engine Optimization
> Social Media Optimization
> Web consulting
> Graphic design
> Ad creation
> Logo & identity design
> Domain name registration (for web design clients only)
> Site hosting services (for web design clients only)

For more information or to get started, please contact us now and mention that you are part of the 9/12 project.

WordPress first stepped onto the scene in 2003 when it offered its self-hosting blogging platform. The open source software made it easy for amateurs to create a blog and maintain it with little design or development skills.  Over the years, the WordPress platform has grown into a formidable champion for web 2.0 platforms.  WordPress includes content management, plug-ins, widgets, as well as customizable themes. With online mailing lists and forums, WordPress has become a great community tool.

If you are going to build your organization’s website on the WordPress platform and you don’t want it to appear like a traditional blog, there are a few steps you should consider.  The first step is to select a theme.  There are hundreds of free themes available, but one major downside to a free theme is the risk that it is used by many other sites in addition to your site.  You certainly wouldn’t want your business to look “cheap” by conforming to a set theme structure that is almost identical to other business web sites. If a free theme is that good and appealing, there is a reasonable chance it is overused by many others.  You should consider investing in a design firm that can build your organization a custom theme for your website.

Next, use posts and pages for the correct content.  Pages are static content that would be informative to you customers about the products and services your business offers. Typically pages don’t change frequently.  On the other hand, a post would be used for blogging or more recent, timely information. Often times within a theme, a new post will replace or “bump” an older post. Keeping page and post content in mind when planning your site early will save much heartache and disorganization later.

The third tip would be to keep search engine optimization (SEO) in mind always when adding content to your website.  Use permalink structures for your page URLs that match your page and post titles.  These are customizable and will change the structure of your URL. This just means that the URL (your domain) is followed by each post title. Also, use alternate or “alt” tags for all media posted to your site.  Another smart place to invest money is to hire a web design and development firm to manage the SEO of your site.

Next, use widgets and plugins to enhance your site…but don’t overuse them!  Widgets are small applications that typically reside in a sidebar or footer of your website.  Some typical widgets include a calendar that chronologically archives your site content, a welcome message, and common links. These widgets are part of the standard WordPress software installation.

Plugins tend to be more robust and typically effect features across your entire website instead of just within one particular area. Some examples of plugins are Google site analytics, photo galleries, and maintenance modules.  There are thousands of plugins that are available for download and they can really enhance your website’s function and content.

Fifth and final tip would be to utilize your Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and promote it to your visitors and customers.  RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.  Your visitors can subscribe to your feed in a variety of ways. The feed will notify them each time you publish new content to your website.

About The Author:

Jason Roberts is the president of NetFUSION Studios Web & Graphic Design. NetFUSION Studios consists of a collection of designers, programmers, and consultants from a variety of backgrounds. The company also offers eLearning content creation and curriculum development for businesses and community organizations.