A website is lifeline of internet home business. In order to succeed you must have a website that that meets the general criteria of accepted standards. Flavor of each site varies according to the intended business and choice of the owner. But there are guidelines which should be kept in mind while you work to develop your own e-shop.

First of all is the domain name. It is the address to your website. So it should be kept simple and easy to remember. Try as for as possible to include letters only in your website name. Numbers are most easily forgotten. So are the hyphens and underscores. They take time to get registered and fade quickly. Domain names should be themed around your business. Try to keep it short and sweet.

Focus on your customer. Always keep your customers first. Remember! Everybody is busy and so are your customers. Nobody will have the time to search for your products if you do not guide them well. With this in mind a website should be developed for maximum benefit. There are other things which appear small and obvious but together they add up to quite a difference to your home business.

To name a few ---

# Orientation – What is your website? What can a visitor get from your site?

# Fast loading - Very essential. If it takes a long time the person will definitely get annoyed and close the page. There goes your potential sale.

# Easy Navigation – Can the customer move through your site effortlessly back and forth from each page? Are the hyperlinks working well? Make sure they do.

# Professional Look- Though you are not suppose to display best of the web designs but your site should look professional enough and appealing to the eye. Your site should be smart and crisp. Choose your theme well and go for it.

# Content rich site – Try and give all the relevant information that your potential customer might need. Again the information should be well displayed and easy to understand.

# Contact us – It is almost mandatory. Where should a person leave his query in case the need arise. You might debate and decide on your physical address yourself but an email contact is must.

# Coordinated color pattern - Make sure that foreground background are well matching. Your font and text should be pleasing and not difficult to read.

# Careful use of graphics - graphics are pleasing to the eye but take a lot of time to load. So you should strike a balance. People have a temptation to use a lot of graphics but do keep in mind that all the best business sites are mostly text based. Take for example Google or Yahoo. No truck loads of graphics. Only well used text with spares use of graphics.

If you make your website keeping your customers’ needs in view then automatically you would like to consider the above listed points. As I said many of them look too obvious but often we overlook the things because they are obvious.

Make sure you do not. Try them and see the difference.

Wish you success.

Copyright 2005 Arun Pal Singh