10. DO have an easy to use navigation system in place on your site. One of quickest ways to lose visitors and thereforesales, is to have a navigation system that works like Winchester Mystery House (an attraction in California that has doorways leading to nowhere). If your visitor gets lost and can't find their way around, or if they have to keep clicking a back button to return to your homepage just to visit another page on your site, they will tire of this and just leave, taking their business with them. Make sure that you not only have a navigation bar at top of each page, but also put a text navigation bar at bottom of every page, so they don't have to scroll to top to travel through your site. The easier it is for them to move through your site, more they'll see, more comfortable they'll feel and more likely it is that they will purchase from YOU and not your competitors.

9. DO NOT use too many large or active graphics. Graphics can increase your load time and most surfers don't want to wait around to see a large but 'cute' animated graphic of your service - they'd rather be informed about your products or service. So keep your graphics simple and use them sparingly - especially animated graphics. Too much animation will detract them from where their attention should be - on your products or services.

8. DO make sure your text is clear, concise and error-free. Keeping your text concise and easy to read is important because if your visitor is confused about what you offer, you will lose them to a competitor. If writing intelligible text is not your forte, hire a professional copywriter to make sure that your text describes your products or services in an intelligent, yet easy to understand manner. And make sure your site is 100% proofread! Nothing lowers opinion of a potential customer more than a site filled with typos and errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation or syntax. (Gee, if they can't even spell 'electrical' properly, or don't know difference between 'their' and 'there', they can't be very intelligent, therefore what would quality of their service or product be?) And that's another point that must be made here - NEVER rely on a 'spellcheck' program to do your proofreading for you - they have no idea if you mean 'there' or 'their' so therefore you can run a spellcheck until you're blue in face and you will still have those kinds of errors on your site! And again, if this is not one of your strong points, hire a professional proofreader to check your site.

7. DO NOT overuse audio effects on your site. Nothing is more irritating to a visitor than to have some new age music or some strange noise blaring over and over and over during their visit to your site. A brief one-time sound as a special effect on home page can catch their attention and be beneficial, but don't loop it so it plays on and on. And even if you provide a way to mute a sound effect, they still have to deal with locating controls and hope they work properly - and they did not come to your site to be an audio technician, they came to your site because they were interested in what you have to offer them. Make your products or services most interesting items on your site, without repetitive, annoying audio to distract your visitors.

6. DO use colors that are complimentary and subtle. There is nothing that will make a visitor leave a site quicker than that day- glo lime green background with fire-engine red graphics! Always make sure that your colors compliment each other and blend well together. If you choose to go with primary colors, then stick with basics (true red, true blue, etc.) and if you choose to use more dusky colors (teal green, dusty rose, beige, cranberry), then stick with those. Use bright colors sparingly and for accent only - not as background or for your larger images. And you should have only THREE main colors in your design. And those three colors should always be from a 'web-safe palette' to ensure all your visitors will see colors you intended. You want your visitors to focus on your products or services, and using correct colors to showcase them properly will increase your sales.

In order to create or edit your graphics, you'll need to invest in a good graphics program. The most popular program used by Internet marketers is Paint Shop Pro. This powerful program is only program you'll need to design professional looking graphics. You can download a free 30- day trial and register software for only $99. http://www.jasc.com/

Image Formats

The most popular image formats used on Internet are GIF and JPEG.

Graphic Interchange Format, better known as GIF, uses a maximum of 256 colors and is best suited for images such as logos, buttons and bullets.

GIF images can be saved in two different formats:

- 87 - 89a

The 89a format is preferred GIF format, as it has following benefits:

Transparency

Images saved in 89a GIF format can have a transparent background. This will enable canvas of an image to be transparent and enable background to show through.

Interlacing

Images saved in 89a GIF format can be saved as interlaced. This will enable your image to display as it is being loaded into a web page. The image will gradually become clearer as page loads.

Animation

Images saved in 89a GIF format can be used to create animated images. Animated images are simply several GIF images compiled into one GIF image file that loops. In order to create an animated image, you'll need a special editing program.

Joint Photographic Expert Group, better known as JPEG, is best format for photographs. JPEG images can contain millions of colors and allow you to specify degree of compression.

Although there are many graphics programs available on Internet, this tutorial will focus on using Paint Shop Pro 7.01. If you are using a different version of Paint Shop Pro or another graphics program, graphic tools mentioned below will not be located in same places.

Editing Images

When working with images in Paint Shop Pro, you will have ability to save your image in PSP format. This format will enable you to begin working on an image, save it in PSP format and finish image at a later time. It will preserve all of your work without any changes.

If you would like to edit an image that has been previously saved in GIF format, you must first increase image's colors to 16 million. If you don't, your colors will be limited. Go to "Colors" - "Increase Color Depth"- "16 million colors (24 bit)" to increase your image's colors.

Resizing Images

If you'd like to resize an image in JPEG format, you can do so in one of two ways -- through your graphics program or within your HTML. You can resize your image within your HTML by changing HEIGHT and WIDTH values. To retain your images original characteristics, make sure you adjust height and width equally. In other words, if your original image dimensions are 50x100 (width 50 and height 100), to reduce your image to one half size, change width to 25 and height to 50. Although you can use this method, it's not recommended, as it will make your file size larger than necessary.