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I discussed the speed of your website load, and now well discuss element 2:2. Looks great: Please remember that this subject has so many opinions amongso many people that it really is up to you in the end. What you think looksgreat, may look stupid or overdone to someone else. If you get criticism infeedback from your visitors, keep it in mind if it is constructive. Welljust discuss a few things to help you decide for yourself.The first and best thing to do is to find out what the big guys are doing.You know the sites that get huge hits. Study these sites. What about them ispleasing to your eyes? Is it a certain way the navigation links arepresented? Is it the location of certain elements on the page? What elementsmake up these websites that make them easy to look at? Do they have reallycool graphics? Do they present the content in an easy-to-look-at way? Noticethat they dont usually overcrowd the page. A lot of junk crammed into onepage turns people off. Their lettering and graphics are clean-looking. Noraggedy edges (aliasing). Keep their formats in mind when you design yours.What colors do they stick to? How do they present their menus/links? Timethem. How fast do they load? What elements on each webpage catch your eyefirst. Look at these websites with a different eye than just somebodyvisiting there. These websites were designed by professionals doing thisfor a living. What types of presentation do they know brings people back.Look at it from an artistic and marketing eye. What about these sitesprovides a lot of marketing material?Dont copy them, of course, but keep in mind where their navigation linksgo, where the logo usually goes, how much content is on the main page, howthe navigation links they have are pretty standard.Youll notice that almost every really good page has some of the followinglinks:Contact UsAbout UsHelpFeedback to WebmasterGeneral FeedbackLinks to other sites relatedHome (on all pages except home, of course)Back Buttons, Next Buttons, Paging for pages that go togetherSearch this site for....These are just a few of the common links that youll see on reallysuccessful pages. Step back and look at your page from a marketing andartistic viewpoint. Would you stay long?If you need help with the "Looks Great" part of your website and you insiston doing the design yourself, here are some pretty good sites to give youhelp:http://www.webmonkey.comhttp://www.flashkit.comhttp://www.macromedia.comSo3. Its links actually work: Ive mentioned this in another article, but itis worth mentioning again. Test and test and test your site for brokenlinks. Put it through some very exhaustive checks to make sure all the linkspeople click actually go somewhere and to make sure the places they go whenthey click are where they were supposed to end up in the first place. Havefriends or coworkers test the links for you to get a second, fresh eye tolook. It helps to put an email link at the bottom of each page that sayssomething like: Problems with our site? Email the Webmaster. This willcorrect more mistakes than youll ever correct on your own. People love togripe about how your website doesnt work as advertised. Its good criticismfor you. When responding to them, respond politely and thank them forpointing out this problem.When I return in Part 3, Ill talk about quick response to requests by yourprospective customers. Thanks for joining me!

About the Author

Lynne Schlumpf is the CEO of Route 66 Cyber Cafe, Inc.,http://www.r66cci.com, a Web hosting and design companyspecializing in promoting websites for new owners, buildingaffordable e-commerce sites, and providing reliable web hostingsolutions as an affiliate of Virtualis Incorporated.