By: Wade Labecki & Debbie Jones

2447 50th Ave, Woodville, WI 54028
715-684-4540

Don't Leave Stale Content Lying Around

No matter how good your Web site's content is, few people are going to read it more than once. If you want people to come back to your site, you have to give them a reason to come back now--and not just whenever they get around to it. If there's no urgency to what's new on your site, they may never get around to it.

That means you have to add new content to your site on a regular basis--continually if possible, daily if you can marshal the resources, but as regularly as your means will allow. At the very least, establish a schedule so that your audience gradually learns when new content is added, and when they should check in. Even if it's monthly, a schedule will at least tickle people's memory that maybe it's time to check back.

Better still, establish multiple schedules. Newspapers have long been smart about this, and you can learn from their example. If you set schedules for adding new content in particular areas, you can train people when to visit for new stuff that appeals to them. This approach is far better than having users come back and find that none of your new content happens to relate to them that day.

In newspapers, a typical weekly lineup might devote Mondays to technology, Tuesdays to finance, Wednesdays to food, Thursdays to the home, and Fridays to the weekend's entertainment choices. That won't make sense for most Web sites, but you get the idea.

Frederic Paul, CNET.com, Ten Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Web Site, 4/23/99

Put Your URL Everywhere

It may sound like a no-brainer, but don't forget to put your online store's Web address on all marketing and advertising collateral. Is your URL on your business cards? Your stationery? It ought to be.

Beyond just spreading the word, though, think about ways to track the effectiveness of your campaign when you add the URL to a mailing or a TV commercial. L.L. Bean once ran magazine ads that carried the address http://www.llbean.com/a.html. While perhaps not the most elegant solution, the a.html tracking tag helped the company figure out how many people responded to that particular ad.

Richard Dean, CNET.com, How to make $$$ on your web site, 6/10/99

A Home Page should load within 15-30 seconds, therefore, when designing a Home Page, keep the following in mind:

• Limit graphics on your home page to 1 or 2. If you want more than this, it's advisable to incorporate them in additional pages.

• Limit your text to concise essential information, as surfers generally skim text.

• The Home Page should contain 250 or less words, with links to other pages by topic.

• Search engines differ when scanning for Key Words, therefore, enter as many "Key Words" within the first 50 words, or the first two sentences of your Home Page.