Load Time:
Load time is a very crucial aspect of web design that many people overlook. It doesn’t matter how nice your web site looks, if it takes more than seven seconds to load, the average web surfer won’t wait. In order to maximize your load time, we recommend that pictures be reduced to the minimum size possible while still retaining adequate detail. If you have a large image, slicing it up into smaller pictures will make for faster loading. In addition to minimizing picture size, your file names should also be shortened (instead of naming an image ‘maincompanylogo1’ shorten the name to ‘logo1’).

Domain name:
We usually recommend obtaining a ‘.com’ extension as that is what is usually typed by people, although there are times when other extensions will be appropriate. You should also consider whether you want to include your business name or industry keywords in your domain. It is also good practice to have a shorter domain as longer domains are more susceptible to misspellings. Avoid including anything in the domain that may change over time (ex. price and location). Ideally your domain name will be with you for a long time and you do not want to change it. Changing your domain inevitably loses you clients and all of your rankings are lost in the search engines.

You can read more tips on buying a domain name here.

Navigation:
The navigation scheme of a site is detrimental to the conversion rate of its customers. The navigation bar as well as your internal linking structure should be easy to locate and operate. The linking structure that is used will greatly determine the ease of use (or difficulty) for your customers. A good way to plot this out is by thinking of a web surfer who has little to no web experience. Will the basic web surfer be able to navigate your web site with ease? Can they make it through every page / desired action without confusion? In addition to having a navigation bar at the top and / or left / right of the screen, you should include links to your most important pages at the bottom of the screen.

Pictures:
Customers always prefer to see clear detailed pictures of what they are buying. If you are selling something like jewelry, you will want to show one picture with a scale of reference (include a penny or ruler in the shot), as well as many detailed close-up pictures of the design and intricacies of the product from all angles. It is always a good idea to have ‘alt text’ for your pictures describing what the image is. ‘Alt text’ is short for alternative text. ‘Alt text’ is displayed instead of the image if the customer has their pc set to ignore images.

Content:
One of the most important things search engines weigh ‘importance’ of a site upon is the quality of the content. All search engines want to return relevant informative results. No matter what you are selling you should compile as much relevant content as possible. Here are some ideas of things you could gather articles about:

The more content the better. Actually, you can never have enough relevant content. If you want to have a successful long lasting web site, you should always be adding relevant content to your web site. For best results this information should be optimized for high search engine placement.

Call to Action:
Is it easy for your users to complete the desired course of actions? Whether it be buying a product or signing up on a newsletter; does your site have clear and consistent instructions as to the course to complete the desired transaction?

Payment Options:
If you plan on taking online payments, you can greatly increase your conversion rate by including multiple options for people to pay. If possible, offer all of the following options: Master Card, Visa, Discover, American Express, PayPal, Money Order, Personal Check and COD. If the means are available, it is also a good idea to have a telephone number for phone orders or inquiries about products / services.

Hosting:
For most companies a reliable web site hosting company would run $15 - $25 (sometimes cheaper) depending on size of web site, and the amount of traffic. Here is two web site hosting directories:
-www.tophosts.com
-www.hostindex.com