Designing Your Website

7. Two-way Connections

7.1 Make sure your site can be found easily.

• If you had to guess your company's web address, what would your first guess be? That or your product's generic name is the domain name you should register.See Going online.
• Keep the name short, preferably with only one element. If you have two words, people must guess if they are separated by a dot, a hyphen or an underscore - or just run together.
• Ensure the right keywords to help search engines find you are embedded in your site's page titles and 'meta tags'.

7.2 Hotlinks bring you visitors, but can also lead people away from your site.

• Include hotlinks to related sites, in return for links to yours.
• Keep tempting links off your home page. These links are better placed deeper into your site, when you have had a chance to put your main messages across.
• Alternatively, you can set up your links so that they open in a new window on your visitor's screen and do not take the visitor away from your page.

7.3 Include email reply links on every page.

• Replies are potential customers saying yes. You will miss business if they go to the office junior, instead of the sales manager.

7.4 Involve visitors to your site in doing something, rather than just looking.

• Set up a discussion forum and encourage customers to exchange tips and advice. An off-the-shelf package for this usually costs about £200, though there are also some free forum packages.
• Include a survey questionnaire. Customers like being asked for their opinions and you can choose the questions to give you useful feedback.