Your website is the first exposure customers have to your company. You have only a few seconds to impress them, entice them to investigate your site further and convince them that you are a solid, legitimate business. It can sometimes be a tough task to accomplish. But by following some simple rules your website can have the same impact as a website owned by a huge corporation.

RULE #1 - Focus on the customer.
Most companies use their logo as the focal point for their home page. Do new customers initially care who you are? No! What they want to know, immediately, is do you provide the service, information or products they are seeking? So your main focal point is a title: "We provide the BEST WIDGETS in Reno". Then add a subtitle "Best Selection in the West!". Then add bullet points to keep them interested:
• Huge Inventory
• Overnight Shipment to Anywhere
• 24 Hour customer Service

RULE #2 - Focus on your message
Are you selling a product? Providing a service? Promoting a cause? Focus on your business and the customer will be grateful you've had the foresight to make their visit as easy and quick as possible.

RULE #3 - Be consistent
The fastest way to confuse, and subsequently lose the viewer, is to put your navigation links in different locations on different pages. Once a viewer is accustomed to navigating your website the last thing you want to do is make them hunt for the links again. It wouldn't be much fun to try and find the gas pedal every time you got in the car.

RULE #4 - Leave white space on your pages
Design your website so the viewer can easily compartmentalize sections of your website in their mind. This way they can approach your website in small bites rather than looking facing a page full of data, links, images etc. You'll find that the viewers experience will be much more enjoyable. In other words don't fill every square pixel of space. Leave some room to breathe.

This is a simplistic approach but it's one that works!

1. Keep Your Visitors Awake

Many sites waste valuable space on their home pages with either a "welcome message from our CEO!" or an interminable mission statement - sometimes both. Most often, that's about as interesting as reading the tax code, so visitors nod off before the page even finishes loading. Unless he's just been indicted, few visitors are interested in a company's CEO. Give him his own vanity page and bury it deep in the site.

But your mission statement can be useful in one respect. Use it to distill your Web site's purpose into a single compelling statement that contains important keywords. Then feature that one-liner prominently on your home page. For instance, MarsupialWorld.com might say: "The World's Largest Selection of Marsupial Statues!" - a phrase that's sure to entice any collector of kangaroo or opossum art.

Use that one statement to pique visitors' interest and encourage them to scan the rest of your home page to see exactly what you have to offer.

2. Make It Short And Simple

Visitors want useful information that is served up quickly in usable, scannable chunks. Don't expect them to scroll down through 3 or 4 screens to find out about your products. Instead, try to fit your entire home page on a single screen.

Be succinct: you're writing for the Web. Visitors have different expectations when they read online than they do when reading printed materials. It's also more tiring to read online, so make it easy for visitors to find the information they want:

Bulleted items: People often scan these first and ignore text in paragraph form, so include your most important points in bullet lists. You can even create custom bullets for more emphasis.

Clearly defined sections: Use color, header tags, or horizontal rules to structure your page into sections.

Columns: These are easier to scan than long lines of text that spread across the whole page.

Short paragraphs: Make your major point early in the paragraph because people often won't read the entire text.

Use these techniques to briefly describe what you're offering and explain why it's valuable. Then provide links so visitors who want more information can go deeper into the site. Your home page is the appetizer that makes visitors hungry for more.

3. Tell Them Where To Go

An understandable, easy-to-use navigation system is crucial because visitors hate to get lost on a site. Frustrated visitors leave and never come back. Take steps to make sure this doesn't happen on your site:

Accessible navigation: Give visitors multiple navigation options to avoid locking out visitors using assistive technologies, PDA's, or non-graphical browsers. Navigation with image maps or JavaScript menus are fine as long as you always include text navigation as well. Keyboard shortcuts are very useful to visitors who use keyboard navigation instead of a mouse.

Search function: Visitors love to be able to search a site to find the exact information or product they want. Fortunately, you don't have to be a coding wizard to include one. Some Web hosts provide them; other free sources include Google, and FreeFind. Learn more about how Web site search tools work at the SearchTools.com site.

Site map: This is a must for large, complex sites - but it's often helpful for small sites that cover a variety of topics or whose organizational structure isn't obvious. By the way, search engine spiders love them because a site map helps them index the entire site.

Your site navigation has to be easy to use. You're wasting your time tantalizing visitors with exciting copy on your home page if they get lost while trying to learn more.

4. Earn Their Trust

Visitors can't see you; they'll probably never meet you in person, or even speak to you over the phone. That means they have to be extra comfortable with your site before they're willing to buy anything.

Include the following on your home page to increase your visitors' confidence:

Company name, address, and phone number: You'd think this would be automatic, but many sites don't include this vital information. Many visitors hesitate to do business with a company that won't provide a phone number. Search directory editors look for contact information too; they may reject your site if you don't provide it.

Contact email address: Always provide a contact email address, but be careful to avoid the dreaded email spiders that harvest your address for spammers!

Customer ratings: Sites such as BizRate, eBay, and ResellerRatings allow customers to rate a Web site's sales and service level. If you're a member, be sure to prominently list your high rating with these services and provide links so visitors can see for themselves. Careful online shoppers do use these services!

Testimonials: Don't go overboard, but a few well-chosen statements from happy customers add credibility too. You might place them in the margin or inside pull quotes for emphasis.

Don't forget to emphasize your site's accessibility on the home page and link to the site's accessibility policy. Visitors with disabilities are loyal consumers who spend twice as much time on the Internet as people without disabilities. Show them you want their business!

5. Don't Break Anything!

Finally, your home page has to work when visitors load it. You may have the coolest Flash animation ever, but don't expect visitors to download a plug-in just to view it. Yes, you do want the page to look good, but avoid advanced technologies unless you're specifically marketing to a segment sure to have all the latest goodies installed.

That's a pretty small segment of the consumer audience. The bulk of your visitors just want to see a page that loads fast, looks attractive, and has useful information. That's not too hard - if you finish these three tasks:

Select good colors: Good color combinations give contrast and emphasis to important points. Avoid red/green combinations; they cause problems for colorblind visitors. Standard link colors make navigation easier.

Use images wisely: Make sure the images actually advance the purpose of your site. Most visitors want to read information, not read pretty pictures that increase download time unnecessarily. Optimize your images for free with GIFBot before you post them.

Correct errors: Even simple HTML coding errors can break your page: forget to close a TABLE tag and Netscape may not display the table at all! Validate your HTML code with NetMechanic's HTML Toolbox. It will alert you to code problems and even correct your code for you.

Beginning webmasters spend a lot of energy trying to attract visitors. Unfortunately, some don't consider what visitors see once they get to the site. Yes, you certainly want to invite visitors to your site, but more importantly, you want them to stay - and keep coming back.

Your home page is your front door. Make it as useful and inviting as possible.

6. Annoying Animation

Yes! It's so irritating that we set the animated GIF to only cycle 25 times.

This technique is most commonly used by banner advertisements to catch and hold your attention. Designers sometimes use it in a Web page's content section to draw attention to important text. But beware. Often, the animation draws so much negative attention that visitors leave your site immediately and never see that important content.

Use larger headings and bulleted text instead of blinking animation to emphasize important sections.

7. Ransom Note Text

Some designers get so excited and bewildered by the variety of fonts and colors available that they have a hard time choosing the best ones. So they compromise and use them all. The end result often resembles a ransom note cut from several different magazines.

Ransom note text takes forever to code by hand since each single letter has a different font and color. It's easier and more tempting if you're using a WYSIWYG editor because you don't have to write the code, just point and click.

Resist that temptation! Use common fonts (Arial, Times Roman, etc) because all browsers recognize them. All the time you spend optimizing your layout using the Showcard Gothic font (for instance) will be wasted if your visitors' browsers don't recognize it and instead default to Times Roman.

8. Under Construction

Few Web sites are static. Most are continually being updated with new information and optimized for search engines. In a sense, they're always "under construction."

However, that message should never appear on your home page because you're essentially telling visitors that your site is a waste of their time. Never submit to search engines until the site (or at least the home page) is complete. If you have some sections of other pages that aren't complete, it's ok to note that, but avoid the animated road construction graphic.

9. This Site Best Viewed With…..

Few statements on a Web page annoy visitors as much as this one. Think about it: have you ever downloaded a new browser (or browser version) just to look at a single Web site? Unless you are absolutely certain that visitors will use a particular browser (on a company Intranet, for example), all sites should be optimized to display effectively across browsers.

NetMechanic makes this easy: HTML Toolbox scans your page for HTML code problems and identifies design techniques that may not display accurately across browsers.

10. Background Music

Background music on a page adds no content but increases the annoyance factor - and the page download time. It's ok to include music clips on your site, but give your visitors the option to listen instead of assaulting them with a tinny rendition of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony the instant your page loads. The choice makes your site seem more interactive and gives visitors more control of their experience.

11. Horizontal Scrollbars

Horizontal scrollbars decrease a page's usability because visitors have to manually scroll the page back and forth to view the content. Monitor resolution settings can cause a Web page display to look drastically different from one monitor to the next. Visitors with low resolution monitors are most likely the ones to encounter horizontal scrollbars.

Remember: if you designed your site with your monitor display set to 800x600, your Web page will appear 20% larger (and fuzzier) on a 640x480 monitor. Most Web designers have 17-inch monitors set to 800x600 pixel resolution (or higher) and tend to forget that the rest of the world is not quite so lucky.

Ideally, you should test your site on a variety of different monitors, but that can be difficult if your only access is your home or office PC. At least adjust the settings on your own monitor to see how your page will appear at different resolutions.

12. Color Combinations

The Web Palette consists of the 216 colors that both Macintosh and Windows systems display accurately. Here is another area where color can get you into trouble. Many of those 216 colors aren't found in nature - and shouldn't be on your Web site either.