By reading the latest web design magazines you will see that there are a wealth of web design technologies out there that promise to make your website one of the best sites out there on the net. This article points out how easy it is to develop tunnel vision and jump on the proverbial bandwagon with these new technologies. In actual fact it is more important to get the basics right so that your website achieves its objectives - the most important thing is what your finished website will achieve.

So what are the basic and how difficult is it to set up a functional, easy to use website that will do the business for you? Well first of all you have to know what you want the website to achieve. There is some reason you want to have a website designed in the first place. Write this down and record it somewhere. If you want to generate leads for your business it is best to quantify this when you record it. For a new website a good, achieveable example would be to write down:

Main Objective: To achieve 10 new website enquiries per week through the new website.

Once you have this written down, you have to decide on a way you would like people to contact you. You would be surprised how many websites don't display a clear and easy to use method of contact. This is just about as basic as it gets! In all cases I would advise you to clearly display a postal address on your website so that people can mail you. I clearly presented telephone number is another really, really good idea. Usually displaying the address and telephone number in the same place on all your pages is a good approach as it makes all your pages appear consistent and this important information is never omitted.

Another really basic thing you need to do on your site is to tell people what you do! You are the worlds leading expert on your business, but people visiting your site for the first time don't know anything about you or what you do. I'ts a good idea to sit down with pen and paper before hand and sketch out the basic structure of your website and what will be included on each page. This way you will not forget to tell people about all aspects of your business and nothing will get omitted.

The next thing you need to do is to have a decent effort at selling your products and / or services. In all cases effective sales copy will be needed in order to convince potential customers of the benefits of your products or services. Depending on the nature of your products or services you may also need to display some nice photography or diagrams in your pages in order to effectively demonstrate your services your users.

Its also important to use the appropriate terminology to describe your products or services. This is important because the key phrases that customers are likely to type need to be included prominently on your pages and this may not be the terminology that you are used to using to describe your products. You need to invest some time researching the keywords that people use most.

Conclusion:

Using modern web design technologies you can achieve some excellent, effective website designs, however the basics of effective business websites and sales psychology remain the same. You should cover all the basic web design requirements first before experimenting with emerging technologies if you want a simple and effective online prescence.

Stuart is a freelance website designer in wakefield UK who specialises in search engine friendly web design wakefield for companies of all types.