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When creating a web site design, it is easy to fall into the trap of trying to be all things to all people. In reality, the key to a good web site design is focus, focus, focus.

We Don't Need No Stink'n Distractions

It happens ever few weeks or so. I am sitting in front of the computer contemplating the meaning of life, i.e., why my numbers aren't being picked in the California lottery. A frustrated person calls and wants to know why their site isn't converting. Shaking myself from my revelry, I valiantly pull up their site and here is what I find.

A mess.

The front page is a mass of blinking this and floating that. In really nasty situations, there will be something like a banner telling me the weather conditions in some city.

As if I cared.

I don't even look at the weather in San Diego. Okay, we don't really have any, but that isn't the point.

The point is a site must have focus to covert traffic into revenue. This is known as the rule of one. Every page of a site should focus on one subject, product, thing, picture or whatever is relevant to your site.

If you have a page devoted to disco shirts with huge lapels, then everything on the page should focus on disco shirts with huge lapels. Typically, such a page would consists of brief text describing the disco shirts, thumbnails of the shirts and prices. The page should not include disco cds for sale. The cds should get their own page.

Don't believe me? Then let us kneel at the alter of Google. The Google Adsense program is designed to let you put Google advertisements on your site. To put the ads up, you simply copy and paste a script provided by Google. Once the site is republished, each page with script will show Google ads. If you look at each page, you will note the script produces different ads for different pages. Further, the ads on each page correspond to the subject matter on the page.

Why does Google do this? Because ads that are relevant to the focus of the page will be clicked more than ads that are not. Put another way, the Adsense program is designed to focus on a single subject matter. The rule of one rears its head again.

Are you seeing a trend here?

If your site isn't converting well, analyze the pages to see if you are focusing on one topic. If you have a weather banner on your site, there better be a very, very good reason.