My first job after uni was working at a small publishing company. One of my boss's favourite sayings was, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." It was a reminder to his staff that the first step in any project is to establish what you want to achieve i.e. setting goals or targets.

In my experience few websites have any goals. Often they're built on the reasoning, "We've gotta have a website because everyone else has one." Even now, many people think a website is a kind of marketing panacea. They think that by simply putting a website up they'll be deluged with sales enquiries. Unfortunately it ain't so.

Realistic and achievable goals for a website fall into the following categories:

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The home page is usually the most popular page on your website. But most first-time visitors will spend less than 30 seconds reviewing it. So you don't have long to convince them to stick around and explore the rest of your content.

A home page has several important jobs. It must communicate who owns the site and what it's for. It must establish credibility and trust. And, most importantly, it must convince visitors not to leave the site.

Here are five tips for creating an effective home page that sets the scene for first-time visitors:

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The single most important element of your website is the "most wanted response".

The term "most wanted response" or MWR was coined by e-commerce guru Ken Evoy. It refers to the one action you most want website visitors to do. Examples of MWRs include order a product, subscribe to an e-newsletter, call you to arrange a consultation, fill out a form, or send you an email.

Determining your MWR should be the very first task when you plan your website. Just ask yourself, "What is the ONE thing I want my website visitors to do?" You need to be very clear on this. Once you've set your MWR you should design your entire site around encouraging visitors to take that one action.

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Some website design schemes make it impossible to know what's a link and what isn't. So visitors end up mousing over text and graphic elements hunting for a link, before they give up in frustration.

Here are three important guidelines for links:

• Make it obvious what's clickable. Use coloured, underlined text for text links. Don't underline non-link text.
• Change the colour of visited links so people know what they've already seen.
• Don't open pages in new windows.

Most people go to a lot of effort to make their home page a welcoming entrance for first-time visitors. But in reality many - if not most - visitors will bypass your home page and enter your website on an interior page via a link in a search engine listing.

When you consider every page on your website is an entrance, you start to view your pages differently. You start to think of every page as a "home" page which must entice the reader to stick around, read the page and, hopefully, click a link to explore your site further.

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A good rule of thumb for web pages is to put the most important content "above the fold". But what does this mean?

The term "above the fold" comes from the newspaper industry. Visualise a stack of broadsheet newspapers at a news stand. Because the paper is folded, all you can see is the top half of the first page. This section became known as "above the fold".

Editors realised that in order to sell more papers they had to put the most interesting stories above the fold to attract people's attention.

In website terms "above the fold" refers to the top part of the web page that readers can see without scrolling. Most users will not scroll unless they find something of interest above the fold.

Deep linking is creating a link to an interior page of a website, rather than the home page. Deep links can be found on websites, search engine listings, pay per click ads, and in emails.

Unlike generic links to a home page, a deep link points to a page containing specific information. They are designed to direct readers to additional information that's relevant to the page they're reading.

For example, an article comparing various cars would link directly to each model's information page, rather than the car manufacturers' home pages. This linking of information is central to the philosophy of the World Wide Web.

The implication of deep linking for website owners is that visitors can enter their site on any page.

From my experience many business owners don't realise search engines index individual web pages (not websites) and deliver a list of pages that are most relevant to the searcher's query. Thus, a lot of search engine traffic bypasses your home page.

When people arrive at your site for the first time they have a few questions on their minds, such as:

• Am I in the right place? Does this page match what I was expecting?
• Does this page have the information I'm looking for?
• Whose site is this?
• What is this website about?
• Should I bother reading more?

Visitors scan and skim to make a quick assessment of the page. So you need to include enough information above the fold to provide answers at a glance. Otherwise they'll hit the back button immediately.

The elements visitors use to orient themselves on a web page are:

• The page header containing your company name, logo and website tagline
• Headline and lead paragraph
• Sub-headings
• Highlighted text and links
• Navigation labels

These elements must work together to communicate quickly and clearly what a page is about and why a visitor should keep reading.

To create good website content you first have to understand how people read on the web.

People don’t read websites word for word – they scan the page looking for the information they want. Therefore your website content should be written for scanners:

• Online text should have roughly 50% of the words you would use for print
• Include lots of bullets, lists and meaningful sub-headings
• Use links to break longer information up into parts.

Here are some alarming statistics for every business owner and marketing manager who is responsible for building or managing a business website:

A report released by Sensis in August 2007 stated that:

• Only 10.4% of business websites delivered additional sales, orders, bookings and customers, and
• Only 8.45% of business websites produced an increase in enquiries.

Source: Sensis e-Business Report - The Online Experience of Small and Medium Enterprises

What this means is only one in 10 websites delivers a profit-generating benefit to the business. In other words, 90% of websites just sit there and do nothing! That's right… no sales leads, no new customers, nothing.