Hopefully you have a logo for your business or organization. Logos are important because they're a visual association to your brand. Your color scheme should also go well with your logo.

2. A headline saying in one sentence what it is your do or what your site is about.

The average person will spend about five seconds looking at a page to figure out whether it's what they've been looking for. Don't make this a mystery. Come up with one sentence that clearly expresses what you're all about and put that in big letters across the top of the page.

3. At least three features and benefits of your product or service.

If you add paragraph after paragraph of text to your web page people are going to get intimidated and click the back button. Get straight to the point and make your page easy to skim by adding bullet points of your most important features and benefits.

4. A clear call to action. Tell people what to do next.

Once someone has skimmed your page and like what they see they're going to want to know what to do next. A big link or button surrounded by plenty of white space will make that answer clear to them.

5. A way to contact you. Like a phone number or email address.

No matter how clear you try to present your content there will always be people who simply need to talk to a person. Put your phone number and email address somewhere it's easily found. If you don't want to answer every call try adding a form to your contact page.

6. Photos that visually convey what it is that you do.

They say a picture says a 1000 words. It's probably 10,000 words on the web because people are in such a hurry. Make sure the photos and images displayed on your website are what people would expect to see when looking for a product or service like yours.

7. A paragraph about what makes you better or different from the competition.

What makes your business, product, or service great? What makes it better than the competition. Come up with a few sentences that concisely answer those questions. Be sure to stay short and to the point.

8. The keywords or phrases people might use to find you on Google used naturally throughout your site.

You build a website and you want people to find it on the web. The best way to do that is to show up in Google's search results. That's not going to happen unless you can identify the keywords and phrases someone might use to find your product or service and include them in the content of your website.

9. The keywords or phrases people might use to find you on Google in your page title.

Your page title is the text displayed in the tab of the web browser. That information is also the bold blue title text in a Google search result. You need to include the keywords and phrases people use to find you in that title. Limit the keywords and phrases to one to two per page title.

10. A form to gather contact information.Make sure you give them a reason to give you their email address.

It's hard to get people to come to your site, harder to make them stay, and even harder to get them to buy something from you. Offer your site visitors something of high value in exchange for joining your email list so all that hard work will not be in vein. Capturing email will let you follow up with each person later and convince them you're the right place to do business with.

Ready to get started? Be sure to visit WebStarts.com to create your very own free website that actually gets traffic.