Drupal for Brochure Websites?

Anybody can build a large succesful website with Drupal on their side. If you are starting out small just for now. Great! make sure that your setup allows for growth. In other words, don't torture Drupal to look like a "brochure" website.

There is a thread in the Drupal forums about creating a guide for developing different types of websites with Drupal technology. I think the development of such a guide is an excellent idea. However, I find fault in the first scenario presented.

The first call for contributions is for ways to develop a "brochure type" website using Drupal. While my evidence is mostly anecdotal, I believe these types of websites to be largely unsuccessful.

Search Engine Placement

The typical 5 or 6 page website - Home Page, About Us, Our Services, etc. - fail miserably in the search engines. And I have yet to meet the website owner that does not wish to perform well in the search engines. The biggest reason for failure is that there is not enough content. A website needs to provide search engines with a lot of information in order to (1) accurately portray what the website is about and (2) compete with large "resource" type websites.

Lead Generation

The existence of a contact form is not usually enough to generate leads. You have to grab the visitors attention, get them to stick around the website a while and then give them a reason to bother to contact you in the first place. The way you're going to get visitors to click on anything in the first place is to provide compelling content. See above.

Repeat Visitors

Why the heck would anybody come back to your website? Because you provide new, amazing content. See above.

Do you see the pattern?

For more information about building a website that performs in the search engines, generates leads and gets repeat visitors check out these resources.

Webmaster World
26 Steps to 15K per Day
Magnet4Web