To speed up your download times, most web design experts will suggest that you optimize your GIFs and JPGs so that they download faster. They'll suggest that you make your images smaller or remove them altogether. Or they'll simply suggest that you put less stuff on your pages.

All of these methods work. The problem, however, is that they all involve doing things that you don't want to do. You don't want to squeeze any more quality and color out of your images. The same goes for your content - you put it there because you want it there. Basically, there's only so far you can go with these approaches before you really start to ruin your page.

Fortunately, there's one way to get your pages opening faster without having to compromise your images or your content. This is a simple and effective method, but one that is rarely discussed by web design experts.

To understand this approach, it's important to recognize difference between "perceived" download time and "actual" download time. The perceived download time is time it takes to have enough stuff displayed on your page for visitor to be able to start studying your content. The actual download time is time it takes for entire page and all its contents to be fully downloaded.

People have gotten wise to Internet amateurism and a poor looking website will turn many visitors off buying. Similarly, a site that lacks focus and tries to be too many things to too many people will not have visitors scrambling to give hand over their credit-card details.

In short, if your website is to succeed, it must inspire visitor confidence, be clear about its purpose and give off a general air of success.

Fortunately, you don't need specialist training in web design to create an effective and professional website. Just keep it SIMPLE and keep it FOCUSED and you'll make life easier for both yourself and your visitors.

Here are 27 things you can do that will give your website a credibility boost:

1. Aim to capture your visitors' interest as soon as they arrive on your page. It's important that you let them know IMMEDIATELY what they'll find on your site and what they gain by being there. Try to come up with an opening headline that will capture attention of those people you're trying to reach.

2. Be consistent in your design. Each page should have same fonts (text style), same navigation links, same general layout, same color scheme, etc.

3. Choose your colors carefully. Don't put inappropriate colors together. I read an article recently that suggests that designers should look at colors they're putting together on their web page and ask themselves if they would put wallpaper with that color scheme in their living-room.

4. Use a plain color background (i.e. no fancy textures or designs). Make sure your text contrasts STRONGLY with your background color -- black text on a white background is best combination.

5. Optimize your pages to download quickly. Avoid using excessively large images (both in terms of memory size and actual on-screen size). Images which are too large will slow download time of your page, often look bad and are usually unnecessary.

6. Don't make your pages any longer than they need to be. Pages that scroll down forever can be tiresome and, unless they're well written, keeping your visitor's interest is difficult. Be sure that you NEED everything on page. It's worth critically examining contents of a page, sentence by sentence, and ask yourself which stuff is really necessary and which stuff can be done without.

7. Don't be afraid of empty space. Don't clutter up your page with loads of 'stuff'. If it's not essential leave it out. You can draw attention to important things by giving them space to breath rather than making them big or loud.

8. Be sure to put a link to your home page on every page of your site. Links marked 'Back' are no good to people who've arrived directly onto one of your pages from a search engine.

9. Include your contact information (company name, address, link to contact page and perhaps even tel./fax. numbers) at bottom of each page of your site. This will save visitors having to search for it, and it will reassure them that you're a real and credible business.

10. Don't put a graphic counter on your page. People will not buy from a site that has something like "Visitors since 1998: 00001471" in a glaring graphic at bottom of page. Just don't do it. You'll have all statistics you need about your visitors from your webhost (or third-party stats services like sitemeter.com).