If it takes longer than a few seconds for your webpage to load, then your images are too big or you have too many on a page. It is not necessary for a photo to take up space of an entire browser window. Too many photos, without a doubt, will slow your website down to a crawl, even on a high-speed connection. Most people will leave your website before images finish downloading. You can make images small enough for a slideshow or create thumbnails so that your visitors can select which images they want to see. Once your visitors click on image to see a larger view, make even that image small enough to see all details, but not big enough to slow down your website. There are quite a few image editors out there to use - some are even free. I use Macromedia's Fireworks to optimize my images. They have a tool where I can make my images smaller without losing clarity.

e.How do I test my pages for errors and user-friendliness?

Have a few other people look at your website. If you don’t think that friends and family will want to hurt your feelings, find a site with your color scheme; tell them that this website is not your website, but you would like their opinion on color scheme and if it is difficult to read. You can also post your URL to various forums to ask them for a critique of your website. If this is your first time testing, you can ask for feedback so that you can get a variety of comments. Keep a copy of answers you get so that in future you can refer back to what people have said about certain features. Later on, you can put together a checklist to go by for every website you design. I wouldn't use just one checklist to check all websites, but a checklist would be a good start. Whether you are a beginner or expert website designer, you will always need to test multiple times. You have a great deal of choices to check for errors on your site. I like to use W3C's validators to check for errors and to bring my websites up to standard.

Making your website user-friendly is one of best things you can accomplish for yourself and your visitors. Taking time to ensure usability is nothing compared to how many visitors you will lose if you have a not-so-friendly website. Ensuring readability, fast downloading, and performing multiple tests will get you started in right direction of designing user-friendly websites. Good Luck! Send me a link if you want me to critique your website.

Each practitioner has his or her own style of treatment. Highlighting specific features and/or benefits of practitioner’s services is most effective way to turn prospects into clients. Increasing unique value of practitioner will establish credibility, promote interest, and increase likelihood of taking a “next action step.”

Establishing a next action step is imperative in developing an effective web presence. All areas of site must lead prospect to a point of action, whether it be telephone contact, filling out a consultation form, or requesting additional information by mail or e-mail.

Tweaks and Tips

* When developing content, be sure to include plenty of key terms and phrases in site’s general text. Search engines such as Google rely on content text, not meta tags, to determine search placement.

* Include key terms in image description tags and hyperlinks. Describe each image or link using terms and phrases relevant to image, industry, and practitioner.

* Offer point-to-point driving direction to each office location by linking to a Google or Yahoo! map. This free service is a great way to increase prospect-to-client conversion, as visitors will recall site provides driving directions.

* If you are a practitioner attempting to develop your first web presence, seek advice and support of a full-service small business web design firm. Professional, affordable web design is available. Creating a “do it yourself” site may appear cost effective, however this can quickly become a complicated and time consuming project. Stay focused in your profession, and recruit wisdom of a web professional.