Maxweb Website Design, the Cambridge Joomla webdesign company

Want a website that suck in visitors?

What is the purpose of your website? If you have bigger ambitions than just telling the world you exist and giving your contact information, then the following advice is for you. Maxweb believes in websites that work, pure and simple. Think for a moment about the websites that you yourself regularly visit. Why do you visit there, what is it that makes it a good site for you?

Content really is king!

Give your visitors what they are searching the web for: content and information that is relevant to them. Without it there is no reason for them to ever come back to your site. Good content can be characterized by the following criteria:

• Pertinent
• Organised
• Well presented
• Clear and accessible
• Reasonably unique
• Illustrated
• If possible, interactive
• Up-to-date

Change your content often

Web visitors have a notoriously short memory. If they perceive that the content on your site is not changing, they will quickly find another site with more up-to-date content. This is if you don't offer a service that is more or less always in demand, like Google. But also Google would quickly loose its appeal if they stopped constantly updating their databases.

The task of updating your content this often is almost made impossible if you have a static website and are using FTP to change files. A good Content Management System is a must - it makes updating your site as easy as blogging.

Market your site with various means

I believe a good website should be at the center of your marketing plan. But how do you promote your website once it's live? The key is variety. You won't get the visitors coming just by one method alone. Here are some methods:

• Blogging on other sites, such as business networking sites
  
• Publish free e-books with links to your site
• Put a link to your site in your email signature
• Put your URL on your business cards
• Use email marketing, it is possibly the cheapest form of marketing
• Consider viral marketing methods like Flash games, e-cards, screensaver, wallpaper, freebies, prize draws
• If you have more than one core business area, consider separating each niche into a separate website - it makes it much easier to optimise the sites.
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Pay-Per-Click advertising
• Forum submissions with link in your signature
• Banner advertising on other sites
• Get listed in online directories (warning: only pay for the best ones)
• Link exchange: persuade others to link back to your site
• Promotional items like pens etc. with your URL on
• Use video, also has a strong viral effect if the video is good
  
• Make sure your web address is mentioned in any PR
• Try to collect your visitor's email addresses by giving away something of value if they sign up.
• Could you run an affiliate program and harvest the power of all the affiliate marketers out there?

This list is not exhaustive, but should hopefully give you some ideas of what can be done.

Some SEO tips

The best thing for optimisation is if you can plan it from the start, including when you choose the domain name.

It's not only about how many links you have back to your site, but also the ranking of those sites. If you can get links back to you from popular sites, it counts a lot more than from obscure sites.

Be sure to fill in meta tags for each page.

Your page titles are important

Do keyword research and decide on which keywords and phrases to optimise for. Then write the text. Be sure to include your keywords often, but not too often.

Don't use dirty tricks, they'll find you out sooner or later.

If it all sounds too complicated, consider paying someone to optimise the site.

People who guarantee getting you on the first page are probably lying. If it sounds too good to be true, it normally is. Furthermore, it takes time to get results, at least a few months.

How can Joomla help you?

First of all, with Joomla you can get a site up relatively fast and painless, and it doesn't need to cost you an arm and a leg. Be willing to pay for a good template (template haters: you have to get a template in Joomla, but it can of course be custom-made for you).

With a Joomla site you have access to a powerful administration interface which will help you to maintain and update your site.

With Joomla you will immediately, out-of-the-box, get access to a lot of features that can make your site more interactive and attractive for your visitors. Things like a forum, newsflash, FAQ, polls, quizzes, community pages, directory, e-commerce, calendar, video and more are easily obtainable. Most components are free.

There are components that makes it easier to optimise your site for search engines.

You can easily implement more than one language on your site.

Benefit from the largest Open Source CMS community. There's always help to find somewhere.

Vertical market components are being made. One example is for real estate.

So you see it's hard to argue against having your website set up with this powerful system.