A new year is here and with it comes new business goals, budgets, and strategic plans. It's a great time to re-evaluate and refresh your sales and marketing efforts.

Your website is a significant part of these efforts and should be a promotional, lead-generation, and conversion tool.

This might be a good time to review the effectiveness of your current website and see what changes can be made in order to increase visibility and lead generation for your business.

Not everything in this list will apply to all organizations, but rather are some ideas that will hopefully have some tips for both businesses and non-profits alike.

1. Make sure the design reflects your brand. Many organizations have a strong brand but have a website that is outdated and does not inspire trust or represent the organization's brand well. Design quality affects trust. Is it time for a refresh?

2. Make sure visitors can buy from you online. If you sell products, make sure your website visitors can actually buy your products from your website. If you don't have e-commerce enabled, you are leaving money on the table every day.

3. Integrate with social media. Does your website automatically update social networks when new content is posted? Can website visitors share and distribute your content easily? If not, consider making your website more socially aware.

4. Make online donation easy. This one is for non-profits. As in point #2, if website visitors cannot donate online to your non-profit, you are leaving money on the table.

5. Make your contact information easy to find. This should be a no-brainer but I still see websites that hide contact information and make it impossible to even find a phone number. Don't make your constituents hunt for your contact information. They will give up and move on.

6. Offer a digital download. Just about any organization can come up with a snippet of free information that constituents would find valuable. Give away educational material in the form of a downloadable e-book or white paper to help prospective customers get to know your business.

7. Get a good Content Management System. In order to stay relevant, modern websites need to remain fresh and up-to-date. A Content Management System (CMS) will make this easy so you can streamline your online communications in real time.

8. Socially optimize your website. Beyond basic social media integration, you'll want to make sure your website is tuned so that you get maximum impact from your social distribution. Check title tags, images for Facebook sharing, and Twitter attributions to maximize exposure.

9. Publish an educational email newsletter. Encourage website visitors to subscribe from your website and publish your newsletter on a consistent schedule. Make sure it is not spammer, but rather useful and informative.

10. Display information about your people. The days of hiding behind faceless logos and corporate policies are over. Publish names, photos, and contact information for the people that work in your organization so your constituents can get to know them. People do business with other people, not logos.

11. Enable Human Readable URLs (HURLs). Your website will enjoy greater SEO benefits, the ability to use social widgets, and better click-through rates on your content if you make sure your URLs are keyword-rich and easy to read.

12. Start a blog on your website. Blogging demonstrates your expertise, can bring SEO benefits to your website, and helps your website visitors get to your know your organization. It also gives you great content to share on social networks which can bring more traffic to your website. Blog to educate and inform and you may build a following of new potential customers.

13. Enable online registration. Not all organizations host events, but online registration is a must if you do. If you make people call or send in paper forms to register, you are leaving money on the table (see a trend here?) and will lose prospective attendees.

14. Link to your other resources. Make your website a destination point for all your online resources. If you have other web applications or services that you use, list them prominently on you website so that you only have to give one URL to your constituents.

15. Conduct online surveys to see how you are doing. Getting constituent feedback can be a valuable way to improve your service. Set up periodic short surveys on your website to gather data that you can use to improve.

16. Respond to comments on your blog. When you get comments on blogs that you publish on your website, that is a good sign. Go a step further and continue the conversation by responding to your readers. This shows that you listen to your constituents and encourages trust.

17. Go even a step further and start a group of comment buddies. By helping others and asking them to help you in return, you can create momentum and social proof on your blog can encourage additional conversation.

18. Sell sponsorship space on your website. This one is mainly for non-profits. Your organization can create a stream of revenue by inviting sponsors to place ads on your website and charging a monthly fee for the exposure.

19. Check your website load time. Websites that are slow to load can incur SEO penalties. If necessary, invest in better hosting.

20. Convert your paper forms to online forms. Nobody wants to fill out a bunch of paperwork. Move your paper forms to web-based online forms so that your constituents can fill them out from any computer or iPad without wasting time and paper. And no Word docs!

21. Stop printing a paper newsletter. This one is for non-profits and associations that typically print a regular newsletter for members or constituents. Consider saving money by eliminating the newsletter and communicate using online tools.

22. Look for ways to optimize your calls to action. Whether you want people to subscribe to your newsletter, fill out a form, or click "buy now", make sure your calls to action are clear and easy.

23. Consider an investment in ghost blogging. Having a blog on your website is not always enough. In order to connect with your constituents and optimize your permission marketing efforts, your content must be high-quality. Ghost blogging relieves you of the worry of creating content so you can focus on running your business.

24. Invest in high-quality photography. The quality of the photos on your website can make or break the design and affect the trust your constituents feel toward your organization. If your website photos are not properly reflecting your brand, invest in professional photography.

25. Facilitate customer service online. Thought you don't want to lose the personal touch with your constituents, you can improve customer service by publishing tools online that allow them to get answers to questions, access documentation, and learn how to use your products and services. Wikis, knowledge bases, and video-based learning centers are great ways to provide support.

26. Tune up your error messages. This may seem like a trivial thing but a well-written error message can salvage a sale. If there is an error during a checkout process or payment form, be sure your error messages are written in a way that instructs your customer on what to do so that the sale is not lost.

27. Publish a new press release once a month. Posting press releases on your website demonstrates activity within your organization and gives you more content to distribute on social networks and for SEO.

28. Invite guest bloggers to write content on your website. By having other bloggers contribute content, you can each leverage your audiences to cross-promote your organizations.

29. Display your work. It puzzles me that so many companies don't utilize their websites to display their work online. Whether you make products or provide a service, listing your work and your clients on your website helps your prospects trust you because they can see what you've done for others. Includes case studies, if possible.

30. Analyze your content for SEO. Along with social media, Google is still one of of the top research tools for consumers today. Utilize a service like Scribe to tune your website content for greater search visibility.

31. Start looking at your analytics. Google Analytics is a snap to install and tells you a great deal about your website visitors. By looking at this data periodically (once a month, for example), you can make better decisions about how to promote your content and what is working or not working.

32. Publish customer testimonials online. Surely your customers have great things to say about you. Collect their testimonials and (with their permission) publish them on your website to give prospects confidence in your company.

33. Create real-world links through QR codes. If you distribute print material, consider creating QR code links to your website that expand on information. Link to informative videos or mobile-friendly landing pages.

34. Promote your customers. Along with testimonials and case studies, look for ways to promote your customers on your website and link  to their websites, as well. They will appreciate it and it shows your commitment to them.

35. Utilize video. Not every organization should use video but many can benefit from high-quality videos of things like product demos, facility tours, or customer stories. Consider talking to 12 Stars Media for great video work.

36. Experiment with Facebook Ads. Facebook has an ad network that is very easy to use and laser-targeted. You can focus on people in your demographics by drawing on the massive amount of personal data that Facebook collects on its users. Surprisingly, not many businesses are using Facebook Ads yet so the service is lower cost than AdWords and less competitive (at least for now). We've posted a tutorial in our Learning Center that will get you up and running in minutes. Facebook Ads can bring highly targeted traffic to your website.

37. Publish a FAQ. A Frequently-asked Questions (FAQ) page is a super-simple but incredibly useful tool for helping your customers get to know your producer or service before contacting you. It can shorten the sales cycle and save time by letting people self-filter.

38. Give your customers private access to relevant information. It's always annoying when you need a form or a piece of information from a provider and you have to call or email to get it. This year, resolve to move as much of your relevant customer-specific information into an online portal that customers can log into to retrieve documents and information.

39. Arrange your website content according to priority. Jakob Nielsen has demonstrated that website visitors scan content in an "F" pattern. Review your content and, if necessary, re-prioritize it so that the most important elements on your home page fall into this pattern. Good candidates include email newsletter signups and other calls to action.

40. Go mobile. Many people access websites via a mobile device, such as an iPhone, Droid, or Blackberry. Though these devices will render your website normally, it can be harder to navigate on a small screen. Create a mobile version of your website that displays only the most high-priority content and strip away most of the graphics. This will give mobile users a much better experience on your website and maximize the chances of a conversion.

41. Link to your website from every other source. I still see Twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, email signatures, and other communication tools that do not link to a website. Every communication tool available should be an opportunity to link to your website.

42. Commit to a 100% permission-only email newsletter database. Make this the year that you finally stop doing mass imports of your local chamber database and therefore annoying 90% of the businesses in your city by spamming them. Ok, I'm sure that you aren't doing this but I'm sure some other people out there are. Either way, be sure you read Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

43. Stack your form fields instead of aligning them side by side. Stacked form fields make it easier for your website visitors to fill in data which creates a better user experience by saving them time when they fill out your web forms. Picky? Yes. Hard to do? No. A nice touch? Absolutely.

44. Lose the marketing-speak. Many websites fall prey to the marketing-speak epidemic. Their content is full of fluff and made-up words and doesn't really tell their visitors what the organization really does or sells. Take some time this year to audit your website content and make sure it reads simply and easily. Write in a conversational style that makes sense to the average person.

45. Encourage RSS and email subscriptions on your blog. Publishing a high-value blog on our website is great. However, it's even better if your readers can subscribe to it via email or RSS. This ensures that your content always reaches them via their preferred method of delivery.

46. Learn more about your website visitors with Visual Visitor. This is a very cool app that gives you detailed information about which company your website visitors are from and what they looked at. Check out Visual Visitor and give it a try. This can be a very cool method for gathering intelligence about your website visitors.

47. Do some A/B testing. The way you think your website should be structured may not always be the way your constituents would prefer it. Get the real scoop by testing your content with different variations and see what leads to the best conversions. Optimizely is a great tool for this.

48. Create a referral or affiliate program. Make it easy for customers to refer you to others via your website. Offer them incentives or rewards for doing so.

49. Allow customers to pay bills online. Even if you don't sell products, you probably send invoices and collect payments. Make it easy for your customers to give you money by allowing them to pay online with a credit card. The easier you make it to pay, the more likely it is that you will receive it.

50. Give your constituents a reason to go to your website. Above all, make it useful. Figure out what your constituents want and give them a reason to go get it from your website. This will not be the same for every organization. At SpinWeb, we give away free online marketing training on our website, as well as give prospects information they need to evaluate us. Other organizations will offer different value items. The days of online brochures are over. Your website must be a modern, well-tuned, networked, and value-packed online toolset that connects your organization with your constituents.

Naturally, not everything here will apply to every organization but hopefully many of these tips will be useful as you review your website this year. Anything to add? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

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