Once you understand your overall website strategy and approach, the next step, while developing your content and design, is to think about your website sidebar.
You don’t want to just load up your sidebar with badges, widgets, and gizmos just because it’s cool, because someone else uses it, because it might work, or because you can.
Like your content, your sidebar needs a strategic plan!
Planning the sidebars of your website is just as important as planning your content, your sales funnel, and your irresistible free offer.
Your sidebar exists on almost every page of your website. That means it affects your visitors’ experience on your site. It also affects the way visitors move through your site, what they click on, and how long they stay.
Here are some important things to think about when planning your sidebar:
- Your opt-in typically will be the first item in the sidebar area of your site, making it easy for you to edit and update.
- Sidebar elements should be used to help visitors access information quickly, improve your visitors’ experience on your site, and increase conversions of visitors to clients and customers.
- Every third party badge, widget, and link you add to your sidebar (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Affiliate products etc.) is an opportunity for visitors to leave your website, get distracted, and forget about you.
- You don’t have to have the same sidebar elements on every page. You can show different elements on different pages to aid in the conversion goal for each specific page.
But what should you include in your sidebar?
Is your sidebar sitting all alone with no one to talk to and no one to share with. Is your sidebar bulging at the seams from being stuffed with unnecessary junk. Is your sidebar confused about why it exists and what it’s for?
There are designers that can make it pretty, coders that can make it work, and marketers that can make it sell — at 
Bourn Creative is a 
