The big thing I've been focusing on is what each of the various elements on a website does to contribute to the end goal. Here are some assumptions of mine:
Logo: Identity or Brand
Phone Number: Manual Conversion Action (personal)
Form: Automatic Conversion Action (non-personal)
Content Body Text: Persuasion
Accreditation: Credibility (Supports Persuasion)
Header: VALUE + Persuasion + Action
Navigation: Points of Interest
Footer Links: Points of Interest / Last Chance
Once each element has been identified, you can now balance the page to that the elements have a logical flow and good sense of balance across the page. The next element I'm also working on is for once we have an idea of how the elements on the homepage are balanced and well targeted to put visitors into the high value areas of the website, how do we move them from page to page to get to the final conversion. This would include which kinds of elements needs to be on which pages and where. This of course would depend highly on the content and how strong the persuasion elements of each would be. My assumption is that some pages will do a better job of convincing visitors to convert than others, therefore they need to push harder for a straight conversion than steering them onto the next persuasion element. With that, I'm doing a flowchart to map out the flow from homepage, to inner page, to conversion, to contact (presenting the value from the conversion) to repeat customer conversion.
I'm having way too much fun with this.
This is very much an unfinished thought, and of course data will always tell us if we're wrong, but it's fun to try to put together. Anyone have any thoughts, additions, disagreements? Hit me!