When writing web content, always put the most important information at the start.

This is exactly what journalists do. It’s called the inverted pyramid. You’re letting your readers decide if the page they’re on — or even the paragraph — is relevant to their needs or wants.

Suspense works wonderfully in fiction and some types on nonfiction. But on the Web, you should not delay conclusions or your main point.

If you do, your readers, should they decide to invest more time scanning your web content, will be thinking: where’s this going? What’s the point here? Those questions will dominate their minds, not allowing them to focus on the important points you need to deliver.

When it comes to web writing, give the conclusion first and follow it up with the evidence. You’ll save your visitors grief and help your business.

How you present yourself on your website can make, maim or kill your business. But before you can even consider placing a word on your website, you need to establish a brand strategy.

Good to Great’s best-selling author Jim Collins calls this the Hedgehog concept (based on the philosophy great companies know one big thing). He insists you need to grasp three intersecting elements:

1. What you can be the best in the world at

2. What drives your economic engine

3. What you are deeply passionate about

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Have you ventured ‘outside the box’ today?

Many businesses claim they’re innovative when it comes to the Internet, but few seem to demonstrate it.

Most stay on the cushy path, eagerly following cyber herds with the tried-and-true. “Why take a chance?” After all, going outside the box can be downright scary.

One group that relentlessly ventures into the unknown is “an ideas studio” named Burnkit, which is made up of 14 “thinkers” in Vancouver, BC.

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Webcopyplus recently had the pleasure of participating in a creative session with Canadian marketing communications consultant Brian Follett, who ingeniously demonstrated the value of branding.

He talked about a plain, white Styrofoam cup on one end of a line, followed by several other cups, each more elaborate than the prior. The last cup was a Starbucks cup.

“Each one’s filled with brown liquid,” he said, promptly pointing out few would pay for the first cup, but many pay upwards of $5 for the last cup.

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What has your website done for you lately? If it’s not supporting your bottom line, a simple mind shift can make a world of difference.

Regardless of the industry, most business owners fail to take full advantage of the Web. It’s unfortunate when you consider a website’s ability to cost-effectively promote a business 365, 24/7.

Hiring employees at $30 an hour to market your business every hour in the year would equate to 8,760 hours or $262,800. Alternatively, a well written, properly designed and fully optimized website costs just a fraction of that. Additionally, you don’t have to deal with several other human resources costs and issues.

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For any business — online or not — the odds are stacked against success. In fact, sources indicate as many as nine out of 10 businesses fail within five years.

Having the fortune to work with a host of successful businesses — from independent designers to global service providers — you start to recognize winning characteristics.

But what are the treacherous traits that are responsible for the demise of most businesses? Based on an accumulation of notes over the years, following are answers by some of the most renowned business experts of our times.

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You’ve got plenty of traffic, but you’re not able to persuade visitors to take action. It’s a common and aching issue for many online businesses.

Too often, business owners impulsively throw more money into existing marketing campaigns, believing it’s merely a numbers game — i.e. “I just need more traffic and the sales will materialize.” But one has to realize the simple fact that a zero per cent conversion rate means no sales, whether you’re attracting 10 visitors a day or 10,000.

Presuming you’re driving the right people to your site, Web site conversions can be boosted through various means, explained Yuval Karjevski, Senior Software Engineer at New York-based Reditus Solutions, which helps companies analyze their online performance in a bid to achieve optimal results.

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Businesses need to dig deeper to connect with customers in the expanding sea of Web 2.0 user-generated content.

The rapid rise of social networking and blogging is churning out information at record rates, creating a flood of independent ideas, views and expressions.

Web authority Technorati reports there are more than 100 million blogs sailing the Web, with 175,000 new blogs diving in each day. What’s more, bloggers are updating these sites with more than 1.6 million posts per day, which translates to more than 18 updates a second.

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Businesses are continuing to push more of their marketing budgets online.

Not too long ago, PricewaterhouseCoopers reported online advertising spending will grow faster in Canada than anywhere in the world over the next four years. Meanwhile, in the UK last year, Internet expenditures overtook traditional advertising in national newspapers. And in the US, Forrester forecasts companies will spend upwards of $26 billion on Internet marketing per annum by 2010 – approximately eight per cent of all advertising spending.

Webcopyplus conducted a poll to determine what entrepreneurs and small business owners spend to gain presence on the Web. Of the 60 polled, more than 38 per cent of businesses spend between $500 and $6,000 on online marketing annually, only five per cent spend more than $12,000, and the remaining 57 per cent spend less than $500 or less per year.

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Just over a year ago, I had coffee with a pleasant couple planning the opening of a pastry shop in the Greater Vancouver area. I asked about the basics:

Branding? A friend helped them design a logo, which was printed at home on perforated business cards. Signage? A small, plastic banner was on order. Online presence? They planned to use a free template and “throw something together.”

After explaining the need to delegate, build a professional brand and get an informative website up so vendors, such as coffee shop owners, could conveniently peruse their product offerings, they politely nodded. It was obvious they saw such costs to be unnecessary.

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