1. Create a customer profile – try to find out what are needs and desires of your visitors. Here are some examples of questions you could ask:

Are they young, middle aged or senior? Are they primarily male or female? Are they financially secure or budget-minded? What gets him or her excited? What are his or her most pressing concerns?

Try to brainstorm a list of topics that might interest your target audience.

2. Create a Unique Selling Position (USP) – This is a statement of 2-3 sentences that explains why you are different from everybody else. This is unique factor that sets you apart from your competition. Make this first thing your visitor sees when they arrive on your home page.

3. Focus on benefits – most web users want to find information about product or service they need as fast as possible. If they land on your site, they want to know how they will benefit from buying your product or subscribing to your ezine. You will need to answer that question as clearly and concisely as possible or you will lose that visitor.

4. Use inverted pyramid style – provide a summary of your information by clearly communicating direction of your discussion. Use informative headings and subheadings with a paragraph of 4 to 5 lines that supports them. You only have a few seconds to grab your visitors attention. Most will simply scan for information they are seeking.

Use bulleted or numbered lists, boldface or colored font to emphasize points you wish to make. Include links at end of your paragraph (or within text) to direct visitors to other pages of your site for more in-depth information.

5. Write in an informal or personal style – write in a unique way that differentiates you from other small businesses in a similar business or niche. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or super-creative. You simply provide a style that gets attention of your visitors.

One common myth is that if you integrate a search engine with your site you don’t need to focus as much on taxonomy. This is completely false. All web users can be generalized into one of 2 buckets; "browsers" or "searchers". Searchers, of course, will first use a search engine to locate content while browsers will manually look for desired information by navigating taxonomy. This is not to say that browsers never search, or vice versa, it merely suggests that all users have a preference for one method or other when attempting to locate content. The most efficient site will have a well-organized taxonomy AS WELL AS a good search engine to satisfy both types of users.

Building your taxonomy