To create good website content you first have to understand how people read on the web.

People don’t read websites word for word – they scan the page looking for the information they want. Therefore your website content should be written for scanners:

• Online text should have roughly 50% of the words you would use for print
• Include lots of bullets, lists and meaningful sub-headings
• Use links to break longer information up into parts.

My first job after uni was working at a small publishing company. One of my boss's favourite sayings was, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." It was a reminder to his staff that the first step in any project is to establish what you want to achieve i.e. setting goals or targets.

In my experience few websites have any goals. Often they're built on the reasoning, "We've gotta have a website because everyone else has one." Even now, many people think a website is a kind of marketing panacea. They think that by simply putting a website up they'll be deluged with sales enquiries. Unfortunately it ain't so.

Realistic and achievable goals for a website fall into the following categories:

Sales lead generation
A website can deliver sales leads directly (e.g. by prospects emailing you to arrange a consultation or providing their contact details in exchange for a white paper or special report) or indirectly (e.g. by prospects visiting your showroom after finding out about your products online).

E-commerce
Making sales directly from your website.

Customer service
You can serve your customers better by providing customer service online. This can range from FAQs on common customer queries to a 24/7 online help desk.

Process automation
You can cut costs by automating processes online e.g. online billing, data gathering, delivering information, and human resources procedures.

One, or a combination, of these goals should be the primary focus of your website. Once you've selected your goals you can develop strategies to achieve them. don't even think about calling a website developer until you're clear about what you'd like to achieve with your website.

Always budget for your web content before you hire a web developer. I know it seems counter-intuitive; you want to build your house before you decorate it. But, as web usability guru Jakob Neilsen states in Designing Web Usability, "Ultimately users visit your site for the content. Everything else is just a backdrop."

Recently a client questioned the liberal use of the word "you" in the home page I had written for them.

A central tenet of a successful business website is that it is about and for your customers.

Too many businesses use their websites to talk about themselves: We've been in business since… We offer innovative business solutions… We have the biggest range of… We offer superior customer service…

These messages do not work. The hard truth is customers are not interested in you. They're only interested in themselves and their problems.

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Recently I was talking with a client about some fresh content I was writing for his website. He asked me about seeing some "concepts" and maybe even some "storyboards". Thinking about it later I realised he was talking the language of advertising. I wondered if he viewed each new piece of content as a mini ad.

My philosophy on websites is to take a publishing approach with a marketing orientation. A publishing approach in terms of creating and managing the content and a marketing orientation for the substance of the content.

Perhaps I am blinkered by my background which is in marketing and publishing. But I am not alone in my beliefs. In a recent article for RainToday.com, David Meerman Scott wrote: "The best websites are designed by marketers who have learned to think more like successful publishers."

Recently I found this quote on an online marketing agency's blog: "Macromedia Flash is the key to making your websites look funky."

It really got me wondering. Why do you want to make your website look funky? And more importantly, what's the ROI on funky?

I'm no great fan of Flash. It has its place and I believe it can improve the ROI of a website. But only if it offers something that's both useful and efficient.

Most of the Flash I see is gratuitous "show business" and does a website more harm than good. I fully endorse Gerry McGovern's acerbic observation: "What is a Flash intro except a fourth rate TV ad by someone who knows that they will never get the chance to do a real TV ad?"

I think the main reason Flash remains so popular is that many website owners are still under the misguided impression that their website will be better if it looks "funky". And their web developers/agencies don't know enough about what makes a successful website to advise them otherwise.