Content is King in Web Site Design

Content is king of web site design and it always, always will be that 
way.  People want information - they wanted it before the internet 
came along,  and they will still want it after the internet has been 
replaced as the fashionable medium.

The web site design must be much more than a store front for the 
products and services you wish to sell online. You are at a huge 
dis-advantage because the potential customer is looking at your 
website with all the human shopping resources running in real time - 
the dis-belief - the scepticism - the price-consciousness - but you 
don't even know the customer is looking - you have no right of reply 
and no chance to agrue or persuade - you are entirely dependent on 
the decisions you made before the site building began.  So they 
better be right.

Offer free information and lots of it. The nature of the web customer 
is to look at a site several times before actually buying something - 
so it is very important to have a reason for coming back - the site 
must market itself. And as well as coming back, if there's plenty of 
interesting information then people will tell their friends about it - 
and also other sites will want to link to your site.

Search engines analyse the content on a website looking for relevant 
keywords and phrases, and use this information to rank order pages 
that are returned to a web surfer in response to search queries.  The 
best way is to think like a customer and design the site from their 
viewpoint - how would you use the search engines to find your product? 
Before launching the website it is important to check that the final 
article adequately reflects the design objectives and target market 
requirements.