This is some test text to see where this goes before the readmore. Hopefully this looks kinda nice. Once Megan resizes all of the images, all the blogs should look like this. I am not adding more text to figure out how much text I need before the readmore. Then, I will tell Megan the approximate number of words, and that will make our blog look nice.
What does a successful website look like? Visuals are up to you, but we have 4 practical tips that will earn you solid return on your investments.
- Make your landing page a sales funnel.
If you’re a not-for-profit organization think of it as a donation or call to action (CTA) funnel. You’ve put a lot of effort and money into marketing costs to get visitors to your site. In order for this to be worth your time and money, you have to get something back from those visits.
Designing your landing page (a.k.a. homepage) as a sales funnel is a tried, tested and true strategy to get a return on your investment. Set up 3 calls to action, with each one requiring less and less effort on the part of your visitirs. The first CTA is what you want most visitors to act on now e.g. purchase your product. The second CTA still offers value at a lesser cost (in either money or their time), such as signing up for your newsletter, your ebook, or a free sample. Your third offer asks very little of your visitors and can be done quickly, such as a follow or share on social media channels.
- Sacrifice design for usability.
Your site could be stunningly beautiful, and your CTAs could be top of the line, but if your website isn’t easily navigated your visitors will leave you without clicking on anything. Your site acts like an extra sales or customer service rep by answering FAQs, collecting contact information, announcing your latest achievements, and presenting your products. The focus of your website is profit, (or donations or information sharing), so everything on your website should do the same. Make sure all of your CTAs are easy to find. Don’t clutter pages. Instead, designate sections with comprehensible titles so that visitors can quickly find what they’re looking for e.g. Contact Us, About Us, FAQs, Pricing, Shop. Something often overlooked: be sure your site is designed to be accessible by the hearing and visually impaired.
- Find new ways to say the same thing.
You’ve got killer copy. That’s great, but if you paste the same text all over your site you really don’t look as knowledgeable as you are to visitors, and search engines will place you further down the search results because they think you’re shoving keywords down their throats, when what they’re looking for is unique content written just for your clients. To avoid angering the search engine spiders (couldn’t they have chosen another insect?!), describe your main points as if you’re in different situations as though you’re:
• In a job interview
• Talking to a colleague
• Explaining it to your parents (or a child)
Now you’ve got different ways of saying the same thing, and different lengths of text. This makes it easier on you to sprinkle them on your landing page, your product page, and your FAQs. Decide what goes where based on the logical order visitors would look for information. Like when networking, you don’t go right into the technical details of your products right after shaking someone’s hand.
- Create only that which you can maintain.
If you can’t 
do something well, don’t do it at all. Read that sentence again, I’ll wait.
If you set up your website to take contact information, process quote requests, handle a newsletter, blog, and direct to your social media channels, you need to be able to maintain each of those items regularly and with care. If you’re a staff of one, limit yourself to quarterly newsletter, bi-monthly blog posts, and dedicate the rest of yourself to your paid work. Nothing will make site visitors more leery of your claims than when your content is outdated, there are no recent blog posts, or they sign up for a newsletter they never receive. If you have the staff power to maintain weekly blog posts, monthly newsletters, and active social media channels, can you also internally process the increase in phone calls, emails, and orders? Initiate online components gradually so that you don’t promise more than you can provide. And outsource if these tasks are not your strong suit, or to take some of the load off your plate.
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