Whilst it is ok to have one or two special effects to jazz up your website, spinning graphics and logos often distract your visitor from content, not to mention they can take too long to download. Your visitors may click away even before your spinning logo finishes loading.

5. Backgrounds

Ensure your visitors can read text on background, ie. no black writing on dark blue background or yellow on white. Also be careful that your links are visible before and after being visited. The default for links in most programs is blue (before being visited) and burgundy (after being visited), so if you have a dark background, ensure your links are light.

6. External Links

It is a good idea to open links to other websites in a new window. That way your visitors can easily return to your site when they are finished browsing external link

7. Site Map & Search Feature

If you website is more than 15 pages, it is useful to have a site map or a “Search” feature to ensure your visitors can easily find what they’re looking for.

8. Content is King

While it is important that your website looks clean and professional, it is far more important that you concentrate your efforts on content and promotion.

If you want a professional website, things to stay away from include:

1. Flash intros, revolving globes, bevelled line separators, animated mail boxes 2. Loads of pop up or pop under boxes 3. Autoplay music. Allow your customer to play music only if they choose. 4. Hit counters of free variety, which say “you are 27th visitor” 5. Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly 6. Busy backgrounds.

Don’t sweat small stuff and get yourself focussed on what to include on website and best way to promote it. We will cover these topics in future articles.

Ivana Katz is the owner of Websites 4 Small Business, a company specialising in the design and promotion of small and home-based business websites. She believes that every business deserves to have a successful website, no matter what its budget is. For more information visit www.web4business.com.au or email info@web4business.com.au

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Choose a web site designer.

Like web hosts, there are web site designers available for every budget. There are instances when price is not reflective of what you will get. There are high priced web page designers that provide low cost and there are low cost web page designers that provide high quality. A good way to find out about your designer is look at his or her own web site. With what quality is that site designed? Secondly, look at portfolio on web site. Are all web sites in portfolio same? Is that web site designer a one trick monkey? On other hand, is he or she able to create different types of designs?

Like any service do your homework and chose wisely.

Sheena Salmon is web site designer based in Tampa,Fl. She owns and operates UpstreamCreations.com