We're regularly asked for advice on website design.  (We're given quite a lot as well - we know there's room to improve our own site!). 

I've formed the view that some sites are 'destinations' - the places people deliberately go to - and regular viewers will have in their 'favourites', but most of us are looking for traffic amongst our target audiences.  To win that, we need to go to where our audience is, and entice them to our site.  Our arsenal of tools includes email newsletters, and increasingly we're creating a presence in other sites to draw traffic.  That's one reason that businesses are using social media - Kinetics uses Twitter and Linked-In (Check us on Twitter here and on Linked-In here) 

LinkedIn seems to really have gained momentum amongst the B2B audience.  I'm using it increasingly to find contacts, and likewise I'm seeing increased use by others.  It's now more than a simple 'contacts' tool - the discussions pages, the applications like 'TripIt' and the events are all making LinkedIn more and more relevant.  This means that a web strategy now extends beyond your simple www site, and it's vital that businesses give thought to their profile on popular networking pages.  Arguably, these are more important as they are where your business is going to be found first.

But, when you do look at your www site, we found the following tips from Seth Godin's blog to be golden.  Seth's blog is part of my daily reading, and if you like it as much as I do, I recommend his book 'Small is the new Big'.

  Here's my list of difficult and important questions you have to answer before you spend a nickel:

• What is the goal of the site?
• In other words, when it's working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
• Who are we trying to please? If it's the boss, what does she want? Is impressing a certain kind of person important? Which kind?
• How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
• Who are we trying to reach? Is it everyone? Our customers? A certain kind of prospect?
• What are the sites that this group has demonstrated they enjoy interacting with?
• Are we trying to close sales?
• Are we telling a story?
• Are we earning permission to follow up?
• Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?
• Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
• Are we building a tribe of people who will use the site to connect with each other?
• Do people find the site via word of mouth? Are they looking to answer a specific question?
• Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
• Is the site part of a larger suite of places online where people can find out about us, or is this our one sign post?
• Is that information high in bandwidth or just little bits of data?
• Do we want people to call us?
• How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?
• Who needs to update this site? How often?
• How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
• Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?
• Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?
• How much money do we have to spend? How much time?

And finally,

• Does the organization understand that 'everything' is not an option?

 Check out his site : http://sethgodin.typepad.com/