A website is a marketing activity. While portions of the site may be strictly for sales, such as shopping carts and order forms, the primary business function of a commercial website is to alter the buying opinion of your niche.

A key rule for e-marketers is to channel traffic through the site to create maximum opportunity to display the information that helps your clients buy your product or service.

Other rules include: know your niche, delivery information and create more than an online brochure. Once interesting content is posted online, lay down the path your niche should follow.

If I walk along the meandering path of a country garden, I'll eventually see the entire garden, regardless of the direction I walk. The path starts and ends at the gate: to the left will become from the right and to the right will eventually become from the left. The garden is just beautiful, regardless of where on the path I entered.

Structure your website so that it's just as appealing to your niche regardless of the path he chooses through your site. Don't build your site so that it can only be effectively navigated from the homepage. Putting a master index or welcome message on your homepage is fine, but add obvious and ergonomic menus to every page. If a visitor drops in to a page within your site from a link on a search engine, offer navigation alternatives that will lead him to the information that will affect his buying perception.

If you sell leather personal organizers and your brand name isn't yet well established, then post testimonials, references and third-party articles supporting your product. Don't assume your niche will believe you. Better yet, assume they won't believe you.

Also, channel your content. If the niche that buys your leather personal organizers also uses 2.4GHz cordless phones, consider including reviews of these phones in your newsletter. Once your newsletters have been posted online and submitted to the major search engines, you may receive new visitors because of they searched for phones as well as those who searched for organizers. If your niche uses these phones, is it possible that the phone users may be interested in your organizers?

And, above all else, create lots of information. Write, write, write. It's tough, it's boring and it works. Start off with lots pages of interesting content. Shoot for 100 new pages a year. Every day, write a few paragraphs. Soon you'll have a few hundred pages of information relevant to your niche's interests. And every page is submitted to and indexed by the search engines.

How do you know what interests your niche? Ask! But I'll save the gentle art of surveying for another day

Dave Murphy is founder and membership director of ITrain, the International Association of Information Technology Trainers. ITrain is the global professional society for IT trainers.
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