In working with our clients over the years, we have put together a list of observations about websites and small businesses. These observations have become a philosophy that we follow.

1. The "look and feel" of a website should represent the company. A conservative company should have a conservative looking website. A company selling items to kids should have a website that looks kid-friendly. A website designer should be cognizant of the differences between website visitors.

2. Every piece of "cutting edge" technology on a website should support the company's business in some way. We can put a spinning clown on the front page of your site which can bounce off of the sides of the screen and make loud noises. However, the clown had better be driving money to your company somehow -- either through increasing revenues or reducing costs. Otherwise, we will advise against putting it there in the first place.

3. Visitors will leave a site if it takes too long to load or too long to find information. Studies have shown that users have a very short attention span. Good website designers will design a site so that it is easy to find the information that users need. We will design the site to work on all popular browsers and appear on the visitors' screens quickly.

4. Visitors judge a company's "quality" by the quality of the website. If a website does not look professional, visitors are going to assume that the company is not professional and not want to do business with that company. This is often a fact that business owners forget when they ask their next door neighbor or their nephew to build them a website.

5. Small businesses can profit just as much from the Internet as larger businesses. On the Internet, there is no reason that a small business cannot benefit as much as a large company -- for a fraction of the cost.

6. Your website should earn you money. If your website is not set up to be able to start making your company money, even by increasing the effectiveness of your marketing dollars, you should ask yourself why it is not and do something about it. We suggest calling us.