How to Design a Slick and Professional Website

It 's amazing how quickly business changes. Before the internet, the only contact you had with customers was using the phone and face to face.

Now, due to the advent of e-commerce via the internet, customers can discern much about your company without leaving their office or home.

As such, it is very important for all businesses to build a website that can communicate with your visitors even when you are not at work. Most importantly, a professional site will go a long way to converting these visitors into customers!

It should come as no surprise that many companies pay huge sums of money to web design firms to achieve a glossy and professional presence on the web. However, this is not always necessary.

By following these basic tips, you will be able to create a professional and slick looking website that your visitors will love.

- Your site needs to be very easy to navigate. Use navigation buttons that are placed in prominent and obvious places. Moreover, you must ensure that they are clearly marked.

- The navigation links should be placed in the same place on each of your site 's web pages. Preferably, these should be located in the same order with the same icon or picture. This gives your website a standard theme and makes it easier for your potential clients to navigate.

- You should make sure that people know which page of your website they are on. Using a "breadcrumb trail" at the top of the page makes it very easy for people to find exactly where they are.

- You should make your website easy to use. You must also avoid filling it up with text because white space is important too. Make sure that the text is formatted so that it fits on your screen without having to scroll left and right.

- You should also try to group relevant content together so that all of the information is readily available in a logical order.

- Make sure that people still know that they are on your website and ensure that you are constantly making them aware of your branding. This can be achieved simply by using a common theme and making use of the same pictures and logos throughout the site.

You should also maintain the same color scheme so that the theme is consistent. This will have the added benefit of reinforcing your corporate image, which should, of course, be in keeping with the image of your industry. Finally, use similar fonts throughout the website to ensure a uniform look.

Additionally, you must make sure that the graphics you use are appropriate to your target audience. If, for example, you are a business that specializes in corporate tax law, then you should not use flippant images such as cartoon characters. Conversely, you will need to ensure that your business is not too plain if you are selling something flamboyant.

You endeavor to know as much as possible about the types of people that you are trying to attract to your site and, moreover, what features they would appreciate.

An attractive, professional website design makes it much more likely that people will stay on your site long enough to read more about your products and service. As such, website design is a crucial element for the success of your e-commerce business.

About the Author

Chris Coleman is a Business Analyst at Capita Technologies. Capita Technologies provides web design services for a wide variety of clients.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

How to Design a Site That Will Attract Traffic?

Are you planning on having a professional website built for your business and would like to know the best way to design a site that will attract traffic? There is little point building a website that looks great but is not search engine friendly as you will never get found. You don’t want to spend hundreds of pounds on a flashy website if no-one will ever find it. The best advice is to have a website built with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind or spend as little as possible on a website but as much as you can on SEO or site promotion.

Here are a few points that need to be considered when having a website built:

Download speed – fast download or people with not stay
Search engine friendliness (SEO) – without, your site will be like needle in a haystack
Simple Navigation
Simple colour schemes (not multi coloured)
Ease of updating the site
Contact details on every page

The above points should be remembered and made clear to your web designer. When users visit your website they expect to find the information they are after quickly and easily. They will also expect your home page to be interesting and self explanatory of what your website is about. Visitors will not stay long if they believe that your site is not offering what they are looking for.

There are known hot spots in web sites and one of them is having your contact telephone number on every page at the top right each page. Also a form on every page is important, especially if you have more than 5 pages. Professional websites often have hundreds of pages to draw in traffic, each of these pages will be consistent with the rest of the design and the phone number and a contact form on each page.

Download time is another important issue. You need to make sure you website downloads to a browser in 15 seconds or less. Most people will click away if they have to wait longer than 15 seconds. Generally a website with just text will take only a couple of seconds to download. It’s when there are large images or flash files that take time to download. A website designed in Flash might look great but a search engine cannot read it, so will ignore it as they will ignore images. If you must have images and obviously some images are needed to give a page an interesting look, then ensure you describe the pictures with alt tags.

Navigation is an important factor in good web design. When a visitor comes to your site as well as being obvious what the site offers it should be really obvious and easy to navigate. An ideal website should be built so that the visitor is only ever 2 clicks away from what they are looking for. Generally most of us are used to sites having a logo at the top with page navigation either at the top of down the side. It is best to sick to this layout and ensures you have consistency throughout the website. When a visitor goes to one of your pages it helps if they know how to get back and if all pages are consistent with regards to the layout they will know where pages are without having too think much about it.

Text colours should be used as little as possible, obviously a colour scheme is important in making the overall look nice but the use of too many colours is very off putting. Stick to 2 or 3 colours only. Colours are useful for making points stand out which is useful. Text is very important as this is all the search engines can read. Search engines are just programs which analyse the text on the page. So you need to ensure you have plenty explanatory text. Use bullet points and hyperlinks within the text also as visitors will just of glaze over the most of the text but click on parts that are most interesting to them.

Search engines like websites that are constantly being updated and not just left stationary, so it’s important to have a site that you can easily update. If you have a shopping kart you might sell out of a product or have new products to add. Except for those proficient in HTML and other programming languages people will need a type of content management system (CMS) so they can edit a site. This can be costly but in the long run will save you. If you don’t have a CMS then you will have to use a web development company to do your updates for you, the cost will differ depending on the company but most will not work for less that Ј25 an hour. Over weeks and months this will build up so it is worth have the site built so that you can do all these changes yourself.

With regards to SEO it is worth finding a competent company to promote your site for you. But for those wanting to have a go themselves here are a few pointers:

If you want your site to be listed on the front page for a keyword like for example ‘computer repair’ then you need to have a page totally dedicated to those keywords, the title of the page needs to be computer repair, the body of the text need to have a high density of the keywords ‘computer repair’. As well as good keyword rich text you also need to have other websites linking to your page. This is like a popularity vote and Google will see your page as being popular and important with regards to the keywords of ‘computer repair’. Now before you go off getting links to your newly optimised keyword rich pages you must be realistic. Do a search for your chosen keywords. If there are over 20 million results, it will take a lot more than what I have just explained to get you there, even for 2 million results it could take some time. You need to find a keyword phrase that is less competitive. For instance, if your computer repair shop is in Kent then you can only really help those in your area so you should be targeting keyword phrases like ‘Computer repair in Maidstone’ or ‘Computer repair in Ashford’ and so on, covering each town in Kent. All of these phrases are very obtainable and would only take a few weeks to get there.

If you choose to find an SEO company be very careful, there are many sharks out there which offer the impossible. No SEO company can guarantee high rankings because a) search engines algorithms are always changing, b) they do not know what your competitors are doing c) some key phrases are just too competitive (sites have been optimised for those keywords for years and years - so there will be no knocking them off the top). If your competitors are paying over Ј1000 a month on promotion and your only have a budget of Ј100 a month, then your SEO company will find it hard to compete. I recommend finding attainable key phrases and working on as many different variations as you can afford. Also ensure your SEO Company can prove they can get result by asking for case studies. It can take between 6 and 9 months of promotion before you start seeing any real results.

About the Author

Carolyn is the SEO Manager of Discount Domains Ltd, experts in Professional Web Design and Search Engine Marketing.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Who Should You Hire To Design Your Website?

If you just started an online business, you probably have no idea how to go about hiring a web designer. Who should you call? Should you look someone up in the yellow pages? Should you hire someone who works for a company that employs many different web designers, or should you hire a sole proprietor? Or, should you hire a freelancer who does web design part time? How much does it cost?

If you need someone to develop a very simple, static website that is merely a personal homepage or just an informational site about your business, then you pretty much have carte blanche. The only issue in this case would be cost. A freelancer will charge a lot less than a professional, but a freelancer might not do a thoroughly competent job. There are numerous website directories that contain a database of freelance web designers who are seeking work.

If you hire one of these individuals, make sure you request to see samples of web designs they have already done, just to make sure they have not done shoddy work in the past. I find it best to hire a professional in this instance, because even though a professional will charge more per hour, they can usually do much better work and get it done faster. So, in the end, a freelancer could actually charge more and you might end up getting a design of inferior quality.

Let us take a moment to delineate what the differences are between a freelancer, a sole proprietor, someone who owns a small, reputable web design business with a few employees, and a designer who is part of a huge company that employs up to one hundred web designers (there are quite a few companies out there that employ hundreds of web designers under a single company umbrella and also provide domain name registration and web hosting services all in one package).

First of all, a freelancer is usually someone for who web design is merely a hobby. This sort of a person has probably taken a few courses in simple web design at a local institute or college, or might be self-taught, and dabbles in web design as a part-time job or a way to earn extra cash. Some of these freelancers might be quite talented, but their designs are ordinarily not as crisp as what a professional can produce.

To reiterate, a freelancer is someone who only moonlights as a web designer. So, they are typically busy with their other career, and will take a longer time with your project because of time constraints. In the end, the freelancer probably will not give you the design you really want, and will refuse to refund your money.

A web designer who is part of a larger company that employs one hundred or more designers is just as bad as a freelancer. These sorts of web designers do not have much design skill, and are often given many different jobs to do at once. As a result, they will throw your design together haphazardly. You will be very disappointed with the work they produce.

The best web designers to hire are professionals who do web design as a career, and do focused projects. You should hire either a sole proprietor who has a large portfolio of work to show you, or a small firm of web designers who work together and have extensive web design experience. Professionals charge more than anyone else, but because they have so much experience and such a wide variety of designs for you to choose from, they will do a fantastic job in only a fraction of the time.

The only time you should use a freelancer or other inexperienced designer is if you can meet with that individual in person, explain exactly what you want, and if the project itself is very simple and the design work necessary for the job is not too extravagant. Do not make the mistake of hiring a freelancer over the internet that lives in a different state and only accepts payments via PayPal or some other sort of electronic payment processing service. Make sure your freelancer is someone who resides close by so that you can monitor their progress and visit them if you do not like the initial design they produce.

For almost all web design projects, it is best to hire a professional. Even though it costs more, it is generally only a one-time cost. A website is typically only designed once with major revisions only done once every few years; you may make changes here or there in the short run, but a web site usually stays the same for up to a few years or more. So, you might as well go with the most talented yet reasonably priced designer you can find.

Also, it is very important to hire a designer who has a contract that you can sign that stipulates certain terms and conditions. You should be able to pay the designer a down payment of 25% - 50% of the total quoted price for the job, with the balance due upon completion. This is critically important, because it can be very frustrating to flush money down the toilet on a design you hate without any way to recoup any of your funds afterwards.

Also, the designer should be able to quickly produce some sample layouts after they have been assigned the job so that you can at least pick a particular design that you like the most, and then the designer can begin working on that design rather than using their artistic license to create a design from scratch.

Follow all of these recommendations and be careful when hiring a web designer. Always work with a professional if your project requires a certain level of expertise and skill, and make sure you request a portfolio containing samples of their work so you can see what they have already done. Make sure their prior designs meet your standards.

About the Author

Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form

Article Source: Content for Reprint

How To Design A Search Engine Friendly Website

by: Arif Hanid

There are many websites that fail to target their required traffic, even if they’ve had some search engine optimisation work done. One of the main causes for this is simply because the website isn’t search engine friendly.

This is a basic essential that needs to be incorporated into the design of all websites at the outset – think of it as the foundation to establishing your search engine optimisation strategy.

This article aims to highlight the areas a web designer should think about and incorporate into their design for search engine effectiveness:

1. Search Engine Friendly Pages

It is important that when you design your website you not only bear in mind what your website requirements are, but also what the requirements are for search engines. Best way to approach this is to remember that search engines don’t really care about how nice or complicated your graphics or flash movies are, or how snazzy your javascript is. Instead search engines look at the code behind your page. Therefore if you want to impress a search engine, then your code needs to be nice and easy to read. Now from this I don’t mean adding ‘comment’ tags and breaking the lines of code up with spaces, but to ensure that the elements the search engine is interested in, i.e. Title tag, Description tag, Keyword tag (these days only some search engines really use the keyword tag), Alt tag, are readable near the beginning of the code. Search Engines don’t like wadding through lines and lines of javascript to get to the core areas that can help you page’s ranking. Therefore careful planning and positioning of your page elements is required.

TIPS:

• If you’re using table for laying out your page then make them simple and not too complex.
• Avoid using frames.
• If you need javascripts for navigation purposes, then use smaller scripts to call up the bulk of the javascript from a different file.
• Think twice on how to use graphics – make them relevant to your content and use the Alt tag for all images.
• Position the main content of the page before the images, or at least with the images nested between the text.

2. Keywords

Having good keywords is one of the most important areas to consider when designing a website/webpage.

One of the best tools for this is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com), which allows you to identify good competitive keywords for your pages.

In general the range of keywords associated to your pages can be very extensive therefore for good concentration and prominence of keywords it is advisable to carefully select the top 10-15 keywords. You can always export the results to Excel and try out other competitive keywords if the ones you selected initially do not produce any noticeable benefits.

TOP TIP: Wordtracker offer a one day subscription to their service from which you can squeeze nearly 2 ½ days worth of use! Here’s how – Sign-up for the service on the evening of Day 1 (the service will be available almost immediately so you can start searching for your competitive keywords straight away). You will also be able to use the service for the whole of Day 2 and strangely for the whole of Day 3! Enough time to get some good keywords for a lot of pages!

3. Content

Many search engines look at the main body of the page and identify keywords and phrases that are used within the text.

TIP:

Use competitive keywords relevant to the purpose of the page within the main body of the page.

Always try and ensure that the keywords are prominent within the text body, i.e. they appear near the beginning of the page, they are defined using the ‘heading’ tag, they are typefaced in bold, or they are used as hyperlinks.

4. Page Title

This is arguably one of the most important areas of a page and needs special attention to ensure that a good title is selected.

Similar to many other areas of designing a search engine friendly page, the Page Title should also have a good keyword which describes the page content.

To keep within the limits of many search engines the number of words for the Title shouldn’t exceed nine.

5. Page Description

Another important area to work on for good ranking is the Page Description.

This is the text found under the META Description tag and is displayed to users in the search results. Again, it is a good idea to pay attention to the use of good keywords when writing the description, which should be short (not more than 20-25 words) and sells your page before the user has even opened it!

6. Graphics

We’ve covered the use of graphics briefly above, emphasising the importance of using an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s).

Although the use of images can be nice and very appealing to a website, it is also important to bear in mind that they shouldn’t overpower the textual content of your page. As a general rule of thumb it is best to stick to a 70/30 ratio (70 text/30 images).

7. Site Map

A Site Map is a fantastic way for search engines to find all your juicy pages on your website. There are many free Site Map tools available on the web that’ll create your site map instantly.

8. Navigation Links

Navigation links to other pages on your website should be nice and easy. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the nav bar is too complicated, e.g. complicated pop-ups, use of flash, etc. Therefore if your site does have complicated navigation then it’s always a good idea to implement simple text based hyperlinks to your common pages at the bottom of every page on your website.

Following the basic suggestions above will help lay the foundation to apply further good search engine optimisation advice which will make the difference in your overall search engine ranking.

This finer area of SEO is beyond the realm of this document and will require further investment based on individual needs.

About The Author

Arif Hanid
Internet Marketing Manager for Ambleton Computing.
Experts in all areas of Internet Marketing, inc. SEO and Web Design.
www.ambleton.co.uk
arif_hanid@ambleton.com

How To Design Your Website

by: Vinay Kumar

This article is for people who are new to web designing and want some idea how to design your web site so as to gain maximum traffic on their website.Here in this article i will show you how to present information want in your web site. Many people while designing their web sites do not consider the needs of the user .I myself,a few days back was looking for some information. Like all of us do,i opened google and typed in the keywords and i certainly got many good links on the screen .I went on and clicked on one of the link.On reaching the page,i found some more links but no information .I went inside the link looking for information and again i found more links but still no valuable information .I got frustrated and i logged off from the net.

You see what happens when you go to find something on the web.It is a huge mess of millions of links with very little raw information .So first understand the needs and then give what you have to present .You don't have to design the page more flashy and with moving pictures,adds,banners etc. Retinal studies have shown that web surfers actually avoid banners. Yes, their eyes look away! Click throughs have plummeted to under half-of-a-percent.People just don't like banners on a web page. Try to include text links than adds or banners. Make the site more simple in view.Have a clean web site.Even keeping a white background and black text is enough for enticing people .What matters is the content of the site and the valuable information it is presenting.It is indeed good to make the site more attractive and more lively but the fact is that most of the people don't know how to do it the right way.The design should be simple and soothing to eyes.The best thing to confirm this is to send your design to your friends and ask for their advise .

Your main purpose should be to convey your views and idea's as quickly and as simply as possible .Don't make them run from one link to another because that will result in loss of interest in your website.The web site should be properly linked.Every page should contain link to every other page in your website.Everything should be in front of the eye and easy to reach.Give attractive text to each of your link.Say something that is tempting and makes them to click it.Select the keywords that describe's your page the best.Do not trick people here because the most important thing is to build trust,so that people come to your site again and again.

If you include hundreds of links to other web sites in your web site and think that you are providing a bank of information to your customers.You are wrong .Avoid it.If you still want to include links to site, put very few links giving in detail what these sites offer and when and why to visit them .make sure that the sites are offering valuable and quality data.Visit each of the site personally and ensure that it is a good link,relevent to the data in your site.Remember your every move,every link,every page leaves a mark on the customers mind about your web site,so be carefull in providing these links.

The last and foremost important thing is to be honest.Donot play any tricks or provide fake links just to make the site more filled with information.

I hope you learned something from this article.If you have some queries on any topic related to this please let me know at vinay_141@yahoo.com.i would try my best to answer you.

About The Author

Vinay is a computer science graduate from MIT.
He is also the founder of www.sourcecode.co.nr
His educational background is basicly in the area of software programming.
vinay_141@yahoo.com

Design Website For Pre-Selling

by: Sanjay Johari

How do your feel when salespersons knock at your door at odd times trying to sell something you are not interested in? I feel pity for these people who have to toil from house to house facing rejection at most of the places. And yet they wear a forced smile as they start their rehearsed sales speech. When they come to me at most inconvenient time (for me) and insist on selling when I do not want to talk to them, I find it, if you will pardon me, irritating; although I do my best not to show it as I turn them away as politely as I can.

Websites which have only sales pitch as their main content are very much like these salespersons who arrive when you are not looking for them. Visitors go web browsing primarily looking for specific information and not sales offer. When a visitor arrives at a website which offers information she finds useful and solutions to her problems, she is likely to visit again.

A website should not be designed only for selling something, though that may be purpose for setting up the website in the first place. The website should provide information and commentaries which can pre-sell the product to the visitor. It should attract targeted visitors interested in the content. Pre-selling arouses interest in the product prompting the visitor to visit again. She will try to satisfy herself with information provided, testimonials, bio of the webmaster, links to related sites and other considerations before she will actually buy the product. In a way, pre-selling tries to guide her in this direction and makes it easier for her to make a decision.

People are more inclined to buy what they "want" instead of what they "need". Once they set their minds on buying something, they look for reasons (or call it excuses) why they should buy, only to satisfy themselves, though the decision for the purchase has already been taken. Pre-selling provides reasons which they find "compelling" enough to part with money.

The website which has valuable content the visitor is looking for produces a pleasant experience for her. By pre-selling she is made to develop trust in the website and the webmaster and will look at the recommendations with an open mind. Once the visitor decides to buy, the website should ensue that she does not face any problems in making actual purchase. The links provided for the order page should work properly and the whole process should be kept simple. It will be very unfortunate if the prospective buyer calls off the purchase only because she finds that the ordering process does not work.

How will your website appear to your visitor? That is an important question which should be asked often. Try to visualize yourself as a first-time visitor to your site. Then see you site as if you looking at it for the first time. How does it appear? Does your headline create a curiosity? Are you drawn towards the main content or other features of your site grab your attention? Is your main content "readable", interesting and not a sermon?

How far does it succeed in pre-selling?

Ask your friends to see your website and give their opinion on these and other questions. Website building is a dynamic process and is never complete or perfect. But whatever changes are made, they should enhance its pre-selling ability. It is good idea to actually test the website after changes are made. Any change which tends to reduce the traffic needs to be modified. The changes should gradually refine the website to attract more visitors.

Pre-selling should be seen as a service to satisfy the needs of the visitors who arrive at the website. It should be considered as the first step before actual sale. Pre-selling forms a bond, an understanding built on trust between the seller and the prospective buyer which eases the process of actual sale.

Copyright 2004 Sanjay Johari

About The Author

Sanjay Johari regularly contributes his articles to various ezines. To see his recommendation for top business opportunities, e-books, articles, resources and more, see his website:
www.Sanjay-j.Com
Mailto: sjohari2001@yahoo.com

How to Design Website Which Google Likes

by: Ramdayal Yadav

Are you going to design or redesign new website or thinking for it, then first read below given points, which google likes in a website, Google Information for Webmasters. There are more than 80 factors of your website that are taken into consideration when determining the ranking of your website, Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Basic principles:

1) Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

2) Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?" 3) Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

4) Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google. Design and Content Guidelines 1) Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

2) Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.

3) Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

4) Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.

5) Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.

6) Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate.

7) Check for broken links and correct HTML. 8) If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

9) Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100). Specific recommendations Avoid hidden text or hidden links. Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. Don't send automated queries to Google. Don't load pages with irrelevant words. Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. for more details Please visit below given links.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/index.html
http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html
http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
http://www.google.com/webmasters/bot.html
http://www.google.com/webmasters/remove.html

If you want, you can publish these articles on search engine positioning in your newsletter, web site or ebook. You don't need to take my permission for re-publishing these articles, as long as you display the resource box at the end of each article.

About The Author

Ramdayal Yadav, is Chief SEO in http://www.maharashtradirectory.com/ This is unique Industrial online Business Directoy. For more articles on search engine positioning visit my site http://www.3seo.com/

How To Design Your Website For Optimal Productivity

by: Alan Richardson

What works best when promoting your web site.

As the internet evolves from its infancy into maturity, website development, design and marketing becomes more and more sophisticated - and more and more complex. Content manipulation, various scripting methods, fancy graphics and effects... and on and on... allow us to create some impressive web sites.

A good gauge of this complexity is the a slew of new internet-related acronyms which popup on a consistent basis. Heck, I don't know what half of them mean. But one acronym I do know - and it's not an internet creation - is nevertheless key to the development and design of any successful business website. Perhaps you've heard of it - K.I.S.S. As you probably know, it stands for 'Keep It Simple, Stupid!'. And it's a methodology widely employed by the best web developers, designers and marketers in the business. A philosophy that provides the foundation for all successful revenue-generating web sites.

From the largest, multi-product online business conglomerate to the one-page one-product mini-site, the purpose is the same. Provide visitors, whether internet savvy or first time surfers, with an online experience that's fast, efficient, easy to understand - and dare I say it... yes, enjoyable.

Whether your an entrepreneur building your own web site, or reviewing one built for you by a web development and design expert, it is important your web site, your online business, adheres to these eight simple, yet essential, design principles. Heed them, and online success is sure to follow. Ignore them, at your peril. Here they are.

Each web page must have a purpose - and that purpose must be clearly stated. While a consistent design 'look and feel' is vital across all pages of your web site, each page has a specific function to perform. And that function should be clearly understood by all visitors to your web site. Whether it's to elicit feedback, provide feedback, promote your company, present product information, etc., all play a role in your ultimate goal of growing your business.

Navigation around and through your business web site must be clearly visible and easy to use. See my article on web site navigation for more details.

Avoid distraction and clutter by minimizing usage of fancy flashing and moving objects, which provide more sizzle than steak, and make your essential products or services harder to find.

All business websites should have contact information clearly visible. A 'Contact' page is minimum. It's also advisable to include contact information on every page of your web site. You never know when the urge to turn from prospect to customer will strike your visitor.

Not everyone has broadband. Yes, there are still a fair number of users surfing the internet with slower, less efficient, dial-up access. That may change in the future, but it's a reality today. Ignore this substantial customer base and you're business will surely suffer. To avoid this pitfall, pay careful attention to eliminate internet-clogging elements on your web site. When possible, use text instead of graphics, static graphics instead of animation, several smaller pages instead of one large page. Do this and you can feed quite well on the desertions from your flashier competitors.

For those who are broadband users, who are not negatively effected by all those 'bells and whistles', who may actually enjoy such an impressive display, remember, 'form follows function'. This is especially important on a business web site, where functionality is key. All else is fluff and distraction.

For those of us who may be 'visually challenged, make sure your web site is easy to see. Avoid fancy fonts and use the more legible standard-bearers, such as Times New Roman, Courier New, Arial and Verdana. For standard text, use font sizes of at least 10 pt... 12 pt is better. On many a web site, font sizes of 8 pt or less are used, perhaps in an effort to avoid the need to scroll. Let me tell you... it's much better to scroll than to squint. For when I squint, I usually stroll... right out of the site. It's also a good practice to limit the use of italics as they too are harder to read. Lastly, pay attention to text and background color. Although white text on a black background looks cool at first glance, it can quickly strain the eyes. You don't want to do anything that will cut your visitor's journey through your business web site..

Whenever possible, limit page lengths to no more than two page-downs. It is better for performance (page loading) and visitor attention when pages are short, quick reads. If necessary, breakup your text into multiple pages, with a 'continued' designation at the bottom of each page.

There you go. Eight simple, yet essential, web site design principles that can spell the difference between online business success or failure. Always remember, you're never more than one-click away from visitor abandonment. K.I.S.S. your website and it will reward you abundantly.

About The Author

Copyright Alan Richardson

Alan Richardson is a well-known internet consultant and publisher with http://www.optimalwebservices.com - a Web resource firm in North Easton, Massachusetts, offering free advice and information for web-based small businesses and entrpreneurs.

To read other articles by Alan, http://www.optimalwebservices.com/articles

To signup for the free 'Optimal Web Services for Small Business' ezine, click http://www.optimalwebservices.com/subscribe