The old man may have offered a genuine bill. He may only want a bottle of wine. He may be trying to cut a deal because no local shopkeeper will take bill as real.

Jeffery may have stolen suit and shoes, and be pushing counterfeit bills. He may only be scratching for enough to get himself on a plane and out of state before he's arrested. Heck, serial killers are often gracious types.

But Image Is Everything Initially

Most anyone would risk ten bucks for a hundred offered by a fellow in an Armani suit. And most would ignore same offer from old man above. It's just way things are. There's no right or wrong about it.

When you approach that office to close big sale, you want to be certain you are well groomed and that your clothes are appropriate. And once inside, you will behave as if your wallet is stuffed to overflowing with hundred dollar bills. The latter matters most when wallet is empty.

Why? Because unless you radiate this image, that fellow behind desk is not going to go for your deal, no matter how good it may in fact be.

Put Your Site Into An Armani Suit And Guccis

This is image your site must present. A visitor must capture it all in a glance, even before reading your headline. The overall visual impact sets initial bias in your visitor's mind. If this impact and your headline do not bring immediate interest, your visitor will be history. He or she will not care one whit about great offer you were unable to make.

At least for your website, image *is* everything. That first impression matters more than anything else on your site. For if a visitor does not linger long enough to read your fantastic offer, you can't make sale.

How many times have you come across an agonizingly slow site, filled with images dancing, whirling, bouncing, and beckoning to you from screen? It's irritating to say least.

If you have to display a lot of graphics on one page, make them into thumbnails. Visitors can click on image they want to see in order to view full-sized version.

Also be sure you compress your images to make them as small as possible, and specify image WIDTH and HEIGHT in your HTML tag.

__3. Forget Frames.

A lot of people like look of frames. However, search engines cannot read them properly and improperly designed frames can leave your visitor 'trapped'. You can bet they'll never be back if you try to force them to stay!

BigNoseBird.com has a nice little tutorial on how to get 'Frames look' without actually using them. Read it at http://bignosebird.com/k3.shtml .

__4. Keep it Simple - and Use Common Sense.

The simpler and cleaner your HTML, more likely it will display exactly as you intended on different browsers.

* Limit number of fonts and colors you use. Pick a color scheme and stick to it.

* Keep your navigation consistent from page to page.

* If you use Javascript or VBScript, provide another way of viewing your information. Not all browsers support them.

* Use tables to properly layout your site. Don't force your visitors to use dreaded horizontal scroll bar to read your information! Tables can also add white space to your site for easier readability.

* Spell-check! A site filed with speling errs is veery heard to reed.

* At a minimum, check your site with two most popular browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape.

Creating a web page is easy. Creating a *good* web page, however, takes a little more thought. Offer a content-rich site that's a pleasure to visit and your visitors will keep coming back!