Believe me, you want your visitors to stay as long as possible. This is only way your site is going to succeed. Your site must be interesting, persuading, and easy to navigate.

First let me tell you a couple of misconceptions about how to design websites.

1. Many people assume that because internet is so "big" and covers such a vast amount of areas around world, their website has to be everything to everybody. They design their website for "everybody" in world and never have a distinct purpose. No purpose and no direction results in no sales! That's a profound statement but so true.

How many websites have you visited that had no purpose, no direction, and no real valuable information that you stayed and surfed around site a while?

You click to that site only to find twenty links that are all non related to site's description nor to each other. A link to left takes you to a computer store online while a link to right takes you to a sports website. Five banners straight down middle of homepage all going in five different directions. No direction or purpose whatsoever. Even if that company did offer what you were looking for, you probably would not consider that company as an expert or even trustworthy after one glance at website, would you?

2. The second misconception is that selling on web is different or easier than selling off line. I know from experience that sales is sales is sales. Even if your business is on web, you still must take same steps to gain a customer's trust as you do off line. Your product will not sell itself, just like your website will not promote itself. You must take necessary steps to promote your site as well as give a persuading presentation once visitor arrives.

Now that you know a couple of most common misconceptions on web, you can move forward with designing your website with these in mind. Don't worry, if you've already designed your website for "everybody", it's not too late to focus in on your sole purpose. It's far less painful to design your website with your one purpose in mind from beginning -- and less costly.

Although some use frames and other design techniques to accomplish this look, I'm going to show you a simple way to create look without "headaches" of complicated design techniques.

You'll be glad to hear that you can create a dimensional look for your website using only two simple tools.

1. Background Images 2. Tables

Go here to view a sample web page before we begin:

http://www.webmastercourse.com/web-design-weekly/background-table-combo.htm

How to Insert a Background Image:

When you open up a blank page in Composer, html, or any other design program, it's wise to insert your background image first - before beginning your design work.

This allows you to lay foundation for web page from start, and eliminates confusion as well.

A background image can be inserted same as any other graphic image.

In Netscape Composer, you would open a "blank" web page, click on "Insert" and then "Image".

On your image screen, you'll see a section near top labeled "Choose File". Here you'll select background image from your hard drive that you would like to use. It will probably be a ".gif" file such as bg001.gif or bg002.gif. Whatever you named background image on your hard drive, you'll find it, and insert it here.

Next, check box where it says "Use as Background". This will cause image you have selected to become background for your entire web page. Click "Apply" or "Okay", and your page's background should now be image you've selected.

Where Can You Get Background Images?