What a homepage should be. It should have a clear message. It should be a dynamic page that instantly conveys a sense of what you do, how you do it, who you are, how you do business, etc. It should start to describe direct benefits that prospective customers get by buying your product or service. It should create prospect interest and make them eager to find out more. It should provide direction and clearly marked links to get them there. It should focus entirely on serving needs of your prospective customers and removing their anxieties.

The purpose of your website is to sell your products and services to your prospects. To be effective your homepage must meet needs of your prospects exactly and provide answers to their questions. To do this you must know what your prospects want and how they want it. If you dont already know, find out. Ask them!

Also, spend some time looking at other homepages learning what works and what doesnt. Are there features and styles that you could adopt on your site?

Once you have these answers design your entire homepage around them. Spend some time getting it right and both you and your prospects will benefit. Dont settle for second best unless you want your website to fail as a result of being ineffective.

When you've done it. Take a moment to clear your mind. Now go and look at your homepage once again and take a minute to re-evaluate it. Does it work for your prospective customers now?

Good luck!

Don't use height and width attributes to make a graphic appear smaller on page than its actual size; this just creates a larger download time plus added computer processing time. Resize graphic in your image editing software instead and use it in your page at its true size.

Interlacing Have you noticed web graphics appearing on page gradually in layers? As each layer appears image becomes clearer until it is in full focus. It gives viewer a rough idea of what your image will look like and decide to wait or click onwards while image is rendering. On a fast connection image will load quickly, so you won't notice rendering effect.

Interlaced images increase file size slightly. Only apply it to large GIFs where file size is less noticeable.

Use of Alternate Text Some people surf Web with graphics turned off (for faster web page loading), or they are disabled (visually impaired people use text-based Web). A good Web Designer will accommodate these situations by adding ALT attribute to HTML element. The ALT element allows you to put text in place of image so readers have an idea of what image is without having to view it.

The ALT attribute will show up if your image is broken. It can also be inserted as one of your keywords, for search engine optimization.

Using Gif Wizard This is a handy tool to reduce file size of your graphics. If you go to www.gifwizard.com, it will compress your graphics online, on any platform.

Optimizing your Web Site will deliver faster page downloads, increased page views, improved user retention, a better user experience and therefore more sales. ================================================== Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Low Cost Hosting and Site Design (http://www.isitebuild.com/sitehosting.htm)

Subscribe to “Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original articles. mailto: subscribe@isitebuild.com ==================================================

Herman Drost is a Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Low Cost Hosting and Site Design (http://www.isitebuild.com/sitehosting.htm)