A professionally designed website will help your business look good and help your visitors to find what they are searching for. From the outset if you design your website with search engines and your audience in mind it will become successful. Below are some practical tips.

1. Audience - Speed
Speed is essential to keep the traffic flowing. For a speedy download limit your page size (this includes images) to 30kb. Limit image size - too long to download and the visitor will leave. Download speed is reputed to be a top complaint for web users.

2. Write Relevant Content
Know your audience - get to the point quickly then expand. Don't overwrite as people skim the web. Keep it simple, simple, simple. And check - use the spell check facility - always proof before going live.

3. Navigation
Many people move straight away from a text dense page because they find it too daunting - whereas if there is a site map or directory web page it makes navigation simpler.

4. Colour
The browser-safe web palette was introduced in the mid 1990s. Then it was usual for computers with 8-bit monitors to only support 256 colours. Fifteen years on things have changed, so you should make a decision based on your audience and learn to understand colours so you that they complement each other. Avoid contrasting colours for dyslexic visitors.

5. Keep Track of Links
Make sure your site is fully functional at all times. Check your website links on a regular basis - if links don't work there's no way of knowing how the impact will transfer onto your ranking on the search engine page, or the visitors' opinions of your site. Make sure your logo is clickable.

6. Personal Touch
Even if your website has been created by the best professionals, if you don't allow your visitors to get to know you, or believe in you, you will have problems selling your ideas.

7. Keyword Research
Before you start to build your site do your keyword research thoroughly. When you ascertain what visitors are searching for then choose 6-10 phrases you prefer and try to incorporate them into your page titles and headlines.

8. Keep it Consistent
The only page which can be changed is the main page. Keep a consistent design so that your visitors will know where everything is located. Utilise technologies like frames and tables to create consistent navigation and your visitors will be happy and return to your site.

9. Make More Money from Fewer Adverts
Avoid losing visitors because your content is covered in adverts. Opening a page and being bombarded with adverts with the text hidden is tiresome. Two or three well targeted advertisements will make you more money and the visitors won't give up.

10. Encourage Visitors to Return
Keep visitors on the site longer, viewing more pages and returning. This is possible if they like what is on your site - a tip to encourage them is to offer a service (like free email), instigate a free newsletter, update it regularly or include news headlines on the site. Make sure your logo is clickable and returns to your homepage.