January 2008 we conducted a "best practices" survey by evaluating the home pages of 21 top television networks -- the undisputed trend setters. Here is what we found:

Only 20% featured skyscraper ads (these were typically 160x600)

Only 50% featured banner ads (all of these were 730x90)

38% only accepted ads that met their style guide

20% accepted Flash ads

Most sites used a 300x250 ad size (10% +/-)

Good ads were designed to accommodate either left OR right placement

Some sites automatically launched audio - so yours shouldn't

The majority of sites practiced contextual placement only (They didn't sell ad space -- you had to sponsor a program to get ad space.)

Have a clear picture of what you want to accomplish -- answer the hard questions of what is success, who are we trying to reach, what are we offering, and are we ready?

Give yourself at least a 6-month timeline, for your first online advertising campaign, to learn the lingo, have all your questions answered, and find the right partners. Remember, you are the SME on your business and you are an Internet user -- YOUR opinion matters, too.

Find a way to engage visitors through your ad -- an MP3, opinion poll, coupon, video, whatever.

Strengthen your buy -- don't think just one ad per placement. Even if you bought one banner or skyscraper ad, why not design it to look like two ads -- one being a design mirror of the other?

Bullet #3 above makes a significant point about the importance of understanding a vendor site's style guide (which also begs the questions whether you have one in place for your site).

If you are facing major content updates or SEO efforts, set priorities so you tackle important areas first with a reasonable/feasible timeline for achieving the rest.

Search engine optimization is easy and more than a strategy -- it is the life-blood of your site.

Make sure all links, image file names, image ALT tags and image captions carry keywords. Always use image captions and ALT tags, and keep related text close to related image.

Make Google Webmaster Central and Google Analytics your close friends.

The more you know who your users are, the closer you are to knowing how to connect with them. Do your user research. Create profiles of at least 4 basic users then develop content that meets their needs. Be sure to explore ethnicities, generations and disabilities.

There may be more users coming in your back door (secondary pages) than your front door (home page). Anticipate this behavior and ensure your content quality is consistent throughout your site. Also anticipate that, due to the popularity of social networks, first impressions of you (and your reputation) may be forming at these sites -- ahead of actually visiting your site. Find out how to assess this.

Understanding some basic human psychographics will help you decide how to place pictures and content on your page. If this is a little too confusing to grasp, just visit big-name sites and look for trends they display.

Don't be seduced into drawing conclusions only from the top numbers from your traffic tracking -- be sure to analyze related pages together for a full picture, and focus on traffic to actionables (polls, downloads, requests, etc.). There is untapped value in your site's "long tail".