Receiving feedback, ideas and constructive criticism from others can be enlightening. It can open  our eyes to things in plain sight that we just couldn’t see. It can reveal possibilities that we just had not explored.

And so it is with your website.

Although it’s important to define our corporate identity and stick to it to the end, gaining outside input can help us gain new perspectives on what is working with our website, what is worth testing and what needs to be jettisoned altogether.

To that end, here are 5 critical things that you can do in 2010 to ensure a more successful website, all revolving around the exploration of new, outside perspectives:

5 Keys to a Successful Website

1. Ask Your Prospects

Who better to ask than those who are in a position to purchase your products and services? By far and away, this is the most important group to engage in soliciting feedback on your website.

2. Ask Your Clients

Getting input from existing clients is also invaluable. When soliciting feedback, though, remember to keep digging. Because you already have a relationship with them, they may initially hold back their deepest criticisms.

3. Ask Your Employees

It’s amazing how many companies do not ask their employees for input on their website. Employees can have keen insights into the market given the frontline nature of their roles, yet often this wealth of expertise goes untapped with regards to the company website.

4. Ask Your Mother

Ask someone from a different generation. It really doesn’t matter if you ask your mother, father, grandmother or grandfather. The point is, different generations interface with the web in different ways. Seek out the opinion of someone from a different generation to help you make your website easier for everyone to navigate and to use.

5. Ask a Pro

Get the opinion of a professional. Ask a web designer or usability expert. Ask a web marketer or website consultant. Here at Website Marketing NOW, we review and evaluate a steady stream of websites. Whether through a Website Audit or Website Consulting, we are continuously finding ways for websites to achieve greater monetization, and can help you take your website to the next level as well.

The point is, ask, ask, ask. Hear what others have to say. You do not have to implement every single recommendation that crosses your desk. However, by learning additional perspectives on your website, you will be able to improve and refine your site to ensure a much more successful year in 2010.

Now is an opportune time to take a step back and assess the website trends for the coming year. By identifying website trends for 2010 now, you will be able to develop a progressive plan for your website that will achieve greater results for your business this year.

So, let’s dig in and check out some of the biggest trends to expect:

10 Website Trends for 2010

Digital Keystone

Your web identity now goes way beyond your company website. Think about your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, Flickr images and any involvement you have in online social conversations. However, your website still acts as the keystone of your corporate digital profile. Just expect it to integrate more with your expansive digital footprint.

Practicality Reigns

The economy still stinks. And this means that companies are taking a more practical approach to websites. It’s not going to be about flashiness and novelty this year. Instead, brainstorm ways to make your website as useful to your target audience as possible.

The Power of Blogs

Blogs are still a tremendous vehicle for enhancing your online brand and for raising your visibility in the search engines. Setting up a blog is extremely easy. The value proposition is just too outrageously strong for companies to ignore it in 2010. Although some people said that blogs were dead upon the arrival of Twitter, that is simply not the case. Expect not only more blogs this year, but also better integration with corporate websites and also more video blogs.

Digital Integration

With the explosion of social media and social networking, expect a lot of social marketing integration with websites this year. Take a look at Skittles.com for a great example of this. Skittles has gone to the extreme of dropping you on their Facebook Fan Page when you head to their website, with a dashboard panel that connects you with its Twitter feed, YouTube videos, product pages, etc.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

The iPhone and iTouch have reached an adoption rate 8X that of AOL after its launch. More than 3 billion iPhone apps have been downloaded to date. Mobile app downloads are to reach $5 billion by 2014. More than 50 million people access the web via their mobile device. Face it, we are mobile. Get used to it. And this means ensuring that your website is viewable and optimized on mobile devices. It also means you should explore all mobile specific options for your site.

Interactivity

Expect more interactivity in 2010. Interactivity is a key advantage of the web over many offline marketing vehicles, and the technology keeps making it easier to incorporate interactivity into websites. Explore options such as forums, Q&A, surveys, polls, contests, suggestions, commenting, crowdsourcing, etc. If you do not provide options for interactivity, users will take it into their own hands — just check out Google Sidewiki, which enables users to comment on ANY website.

Video Everywhere

People love video. It’s as simple as that. YouTube serves roughly 10 billion videos on a monthly basis. Expect to see videos EVERYWHERE in 2010. They will be on home pages, on product pages, in educational content, on YouTube.com and MetaCafe.com, and in blogs. A good example of this is Wine Library TV, with more than 125,000 monthly unique visitors.

Clean, High Quality Design

Expect design to get better this year. There has been an overemphasis on DIY and free templates/tools for the small business community in the past. For anyone serious about their website, they need to take their website design seriously. This typically means hiring a professional website designer. The investment is worth it. In 2010, expect a higher level of quality of illustrations. Check out Meomi Design’s website, and it will open your mind to the possibilities of exceptional design for your site.

Personalization

Leveraging the examples of Threadless.com, Zazzle.com or Lulu.com, expect more personalization in websites in 2010. What the world is really waiting for is a simpler, easier and more scalable way to implement personalization in small business websites. The Website Marketing NOW team believes that such platforms will start to appear in 2010.

Big

There’s a trend towards big now. This means big headers, big type, big images, big calls to action. Think big, big, big. For examples, check out Matt Mullenweg’s blog, Infusionsoft and PixelResort.

Get better results from your website by asking yourself these 5 questions:

1. What’s the one thing I can do today that would have the biggest impact on my website results?

2. What’s the one thing I can do longer-term that would have the biggest impact on my long-term website results?

3. How can I improve my home page?

4. What’s something new that I can test today on my website forms or Contact page?

5. When was the last time I not only analyzed my web analytics data, but then also changed something on my website accordingly?

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Check out our latest blog posts on StartupNation.com, a site devoted to helping entrepreneurs, startups and small business owners build business and achieve success.

Our four latest posts are as follows:

Going Beyond the Website Conversion to Measure Success
Look beyond a single website conversion event to measure success. Aim at maximizing lifetime value to generate higher returns for your business.

23 Google Tools for Your Website
Check out these 23 resources from Google to increase the performance of and to promote your website.

5 Killer B2B Digital Strategies
Who says business-to-business companies cannot leverage the digital channel to fuel growth? Learn five important B2B digital strategies.

Improve Website Navigation & Improve Your Conversion Rates
By improving your website’s navigational structure, you are sure to increase your conversion rates and generate more results from your website.

Next up on StartupNation will be Website Marketing NOW’s Landing Page Tips series, starting today. Be sure to check out the series and generate more leads, orders and sales from your Landing Pages!

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Check out our latest blog posts on StartupNation.com, a site devoted to helping entrepreneurs, startups and small business owners build business and achieve success.

Our two latest posts are as follows:

The Mid-Year Website Checkup
(If you expect to get the most out of your website this year, you really can’t miss this!)

11 Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog
(If your business does not yet have a blog, read this!)

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

Website Marketing NOW is a regular contributor of website and Internet marketing advice on StartupNation.com, a truly awesome site dedicated to helping entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses become successful through education, inspiration and community.

Several of our recent blog posts on StartupNation.com have been extremely popular, generating some of the highest page views among all the blogs on the site in 2009.

Based on the popularity of the blog posts, we thought you might find the content valuable and so are highlighting the most highly read posts here for you. Check them out!

• 15 Questions to Measure the Strength of Your Home Page
• The Internet Marketing Checklist for Small Business
• 19 Ways to Increase Your Website Conversions
• 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Designing Your Website
• 11 Reasons People Leave Your Website

Hope that you find the advice to be useful in taking your website and your Internet marketing to the next level. Happy Reading!

Subscribe to the Website Marketing NOW blog feed.

Follow Website Marketing NOW (WebsiteMN) on Twitter.

What makes a great small business website? Obviously there are a number of factors. However, what if you had to boil it down to the most important element?

Our guess is that the most important factor in the creation of a great small business website is a customer-focus:

1. To create a website that is obsessively focused on site visitors.
2. To create a website that solves their problems.
3. To create a website that helps them achieve their objectives.

Instead of focusing on one’s company, one’s products, one’s services, one’s technology and one’s processes, it is much better to focus on the site visitor. See things from the site visitor’s perspective. Why do people come to your site? What are they thinking while on your site? How do they define a fulfilling, successful site experience? What do they need to walk away with?

So instead of telling people how great your products are, how about describing how you solve their problems? Our guess is that your website will be more successful in achieving your site objectives, whether increased leads, customers or revenue.