Viperfish Media is the home of freelance Joomla designer and Joomla developer, John Pitchers. Based in Perth, Western Australia, John specialises in all aspects of Joomla website development.

You can never really control where a visitor enters your site. The internet is a 'web' and things are deliberately hyperlinked all over the place. It's actually quite a tangled web, and this is the beauty of the internet. You want to channel traffic towards your intended goal or action. It's all very nice that visitors have come in the first place by clicking a link located on another site. Now that they're here, you want them to enter the channel. Of course, make sure that visitors know where they are all the time. If a visitor enters through a page low-down in the chain (or tree, rather), they should be able to grab a bearing without having to click things, including the navigation menu. A hint is to always hove your main goal as a part of the navigation menu.

There are three important sections you should split your site into:

Getting your traffic's attention is what your index/homepage, your introduction, is for. It should be succinct (short and concise) and tell your visitor what's in the site for them. The proposition that sets up your visitors with what you're achieving should also be direct. Finally, you want something to get your visitors to become customers. In my view, customers aren't just people who 'buy stuff', but visitors who establish a relationship with a site where they return to the site. A person who submits his email address to become part of a community is in my eyes a customer.

You can also divide each individual page in a similar way. Think about this during planning and initial development of the site. Your opening must be an attention grabber at the top of each page. A sentence or that page's headline is enough. Within a few seconds, your visitor already has a motive to keep reading your page! Be aware that your description is building the knowledge of your visitor. Once he or she has taken the time to finish reading, it's a very good idea to make sure you provide the right calls to take him/her to your next target.