When you are doing business online, the people that you want to come to your site, cannot physically see walls and shelves and products. So instead they do see the design of your website. You website then becomes the hub of your business life online. And as it is true in the real world it is true online. People judge a book by hits cover.

It is important to show your visitors that you are professional and care about the quality of your design, i.e. your business. In a real store on some street you would not let your sales people run around in cut offs and t-shirts with holes in them, would you? No, of course you would not; you would want to show that you were professional and dressed for business. First impressions are vital in all aspects of our life, business life included.

It is the same online. If you throw up a five minute shabbily done website, you are literally telling everyone that comes, that you are not a professional and that you don't really care about quality.

Now if on the other side, you have a wonderfully done professional looking website, you are telling your visitors that you cared enough to do it right and that you think details are important. You show a great sense of professionalism and that you are going to be around to do business.

Good Design Practices

You website is where you customers will go to purchase something from you. Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep the text on your website in "readable chunks." If the paragraphs are too long, then shorten them or make two paragraphs, as people are more likely to read it. Use bullets to point out important concepts.

Make sure your website is cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Rules to make sure your website performs well:

Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have very beautiful pictures with welcoming words or enter website here. They are empty and worthless as they really have no purpose. Don't give your visitors any reason to click the leave or back button! Give them the immediate value of your site upfront.

Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Too many banners and people don't see them. So it is a waste of your website space. Instead provide more valuable content and use affiliate links or AdSense and let your customers want to buy something from you.

Have a simple and clear navigation

This is a critical step. You should have a well thought out simple way to navigate around on your site. It should be easy enough for a child to use. Don't have complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If they can't find the buy button or are having a hard time going where they want to go on your site, they will leave. Don't give them that chance.

Avoid using audio on your site

Have you ever been to a site that has that annoying audio feed of the same 30 second speech over and over again? Well don't put one on your site. Your customer while reading your site is not going to want to hear it. If you just have to have audio, then give the option of closing it or turning the volume down by the customer.