When thinking about building a website or going for a refresher it's important to view your site as a tool for generating attention. If you are a business it's critcial to think about the message you want to present, and the answer you want back.  Looking for leads?  Then it's important to develop a strategy on several fronts:

1. How are prospects going to contact you?
2. How are you going to respond, your follow up?
3. What information will you provide on your website, and when you respond to your prospect?

It's not enough to 'have a website' for a business.  It needs to do something to further your business goals or there really is no point in having a business website.  At the minimum be available via email in a timely manner and strongly consider a phone call follow up to show you are really a person.  The easiest way to have your prospect contact you outside of calling you is to fill out a form that gets sent as an email to you.  This is not too bad if you don't get a lot of email responses but it can really knock you out on a larger project.  Managing all that information really helps if it passes through a database which allows you to sort and filter your form responses.  If you are a builder it may not be practical to quote a job in Tibet. 

Think about your audience, United States?  nautical bric a brac, sheet music,   a town or state? The best tool for this is a Customer Relationship Management system that provides contact management with important things like email addresses and phone numbers.  CRMs give a business the ability to track their leads and results to various marketing campaigns. This is typically a web based application like Sugar CRM, Salesforce or it can be PC based like GoldMine and ACT!  It does not matter as long as your CRM matches your needs.  If you are using the Internet for marketing then it might be a good move to base your CRM in the clouds (on a web server).  Your work is made easier for form processing in the long list of reasons to use the cloud. 

This leaves us with your presentation once you have made contact.  It's easy enough to send a thank you email to a contact form submission and providing a few links to some of your work, a portfolio, or if you have one already, provide a link to a testimonial page from satisfied customers. Want to up your conversion? have your email offer a limited time discount.  Give your prospect a reason to join up. 

Building a Website is Not Building the Internet.  Everything is done, the tools are forged, the path is well worn, the only thing is you walking on the path.