For sites where conversion rates are a priority, primary purpose of design should be to present message in such a way that it delivers maximum impact.

>> So "good" design doesn't matter?

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that design serves a function. For an entertainment or arts site that primary function may be to present images in an attractive way. That's fine.

But for a site that is created to generate sales, text must come first. Everything...from architecture of site to its design must work towards supporting your message and delivering people to final checkout page.

>> Sounds obvious. Why make point?

I make point because presentation of message is often last thing on minds of web groups.

Web designers are higher on food chain in these groups. All too often writing of message becomes a secondary consideration. "The site will look like this. We'll arrange pages like this. And by way, we need someone to write words."

This attitude of "text comes last" is nonsense and it has been from day internet first went commercial.

Hundreds of millions of visitors have always known that their primary need on arriving at a site is to find key messages. "Am I in right place? Will I find what I want on this site?"

Our visitors know that words are most important element on a web site.

Google knows that words are most important element on a web site. (Unlikely aside from Googlebot: "Cool design. Better rank this page higher.)

The only people who haven't understood this so far are web group managers and web designers.

Even marketing people insist on just dropping in for-print-approved text on their sites, without any thought as to special needs of medium. (Would they create a radio ad simply by using sound track from their TV commercial? I don't think so. Every medium has its own demands when it comes to words, web included.)

>> How to design to showcase message

The first step is to bring writer in at beginning. The designer will find that writer has a number of priorities and needs in mind. He or she might say:

"This is page's primary message. We need people to really get this on first screen."

"We have three separate audience needs to address here. I need these three headings to have equal emphasis, preferably on first screen."

Need a website for small business, church, sports team, or community but don’t know where to start? Don’t have time or maybe even knowledge on how to build and or publish a website? Well let me say it’s really know big deal. I will try to give you basics to get started.

Ok let’s get to it. Here are some steps you can follow in no particular order.

-Step one, create some pages. You probably have heard of “HTML”, html stands for “hypertext markup language”. Hypertext Markup Language is a text-based markup language used for web documents. In HTML, markup indicates page structure. A website can be made up of many “html” files. If you know absolutely nothing about HTML then you’re going to have to do some research or purchase a book. If you’re using a good HTML editor or MS Word then this task is not be so bad. I don’t want to get into task of coding HTML in this article so you’re going to have to play around with building some practice pages.

About HTML editors Their are many editors that can be used to create and edit html files. Some free, some costing hundreds of dollars. Since it is a text based language pretty much any text editor will do but I suggjest investing in a good WIZ-zee-wig. (Short for what you see is what you get). My favorite is Macromedia Dreamweaver. If you have Microsoft word then you can save “Word” documents as web pages as well.

Page Types There are basically two types of web pages, static and dynamic. What’s difference between a static and dynamic web page? Well it is exactly that, static or dynamic. Static never changes. It basically just text, links and images. Dynamic web page, dynamic HTML or DHTML is a technique of creating interactive web sites by using a combination of static markup language HTML, a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript, ASP, PHP) and style definition language Cascading Style Sheets. I’ll get into JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets some other time.